Suspicious attack? files lost! Windows 10

omnipeta

Switched PC off this morning and when I logged on again it was asking me to 'sign out of Windows' then 'sign back in, or 'your files will be lost'?

Did as 'asked' but all my 'favourites' have disappeared of my browser (MS Edge) and I seem to have lost all my documents?
I've always 'boasted' to friends that as I pay for Avast I've never had any issues, should have kept my mouth shut!
Any advice greatly appreciated.

PS I don't open any suspicious e mails and have not accessed any 'suspicious' web sites.

emptybox

Could be malware, or could be some corruption of your user account.
Have you scanned with Avast and Malwarebytes?

wealdroam

omnipeta wrote: »

Switched PC off this morning and when I logged on again it was asking me to 'sign out of Windows' then 'sign back in, or 'your files will be lost'?

Did as 'asked' but all my 'favourites' have disappeared of my browser (MS Edge) and I seem to have lost all my documents?
I've always 'boasted' to friends that as I pay for Avast I've never had any issues, should have kept my mouth shut!
Any advice greatly appreciated.

PS I don't open any suspicious e mails and have not accessed any 'suspicious' web sites.

I had the same thing happen this morning.

This is as a result of Windows updates last night.
In my case it appears that the update process didn't complete properly.

I started to follow Option 1 found here: How to Fix We can’t Sign Into Your Account Error on Windows.

Didn't need to follow that script very far.

Switched the machine off then rebooted.
At the Windows sign-in screen, click on the 'shutdown' option in the bottom right of the screen. From the resulting dropdown list choose the 'restart' option.

Almost immediately a message “Preparing to configure Windows, please do not turn off your computer" appeared.

I left the thing like that for maybe two hours and eventually the thing continued the bootup process and I was able to sign in normally.

I hope that helps you.

Strider590

In the start menu search box type C:\users, this will open the user profile folder, select your user name, scroll down to the documents folder, open it and see if your files are there.

This could be a "Documents Library" issue.

omnipeta

Same again this morning, rebooted then all okay now?
Thank you all for your great advice.

pendragon_arther

I've only had W10 on a new laptop for a few months from a Vista one. I know most folks don't like latter but I never had problems with it. On new laptop I had it going very slowly for a day or so and did extensive troubleshooting plus malware scanning. In the end I did a recovery with keeping files intact. Very impressed with that although I've got to reinstall a lot of programs. It seems every now and again the updates cause problems which I never had with XP or Vista. Why can't M$ sort out their update problems on W10?

esuhl

pendragon_arther wrote: »

Why can't M$ sort out their update problems on W10?

Yeah. Wasn't the enforced rolling-release model of Win10 supposed to make updates less problematic...? :-/

forgotmyname

esuhl wrote: »

Yeah. Wasn't the enforced rolling-release model of Win10 supposed to make updates less problematic...? :-/

With all the messed up updates over the years that left people with non functioning PCs you would have thought forced instant updates were the last thing anyone wanted.

It was always wise to let others test the updates first and see how it went.

Fix one problem and create 3 more?