Roaming Profile Files and Settings Disappear

roaming-profilewindows-server-2012

This morning a user, let's call them Greg, logged into their laptop which is running Windows 8 Pro. Their profile is a roaming profile, Active Directory is running on Windows Server 2012.

It took several minutes for their computer to finally log in. Usually the login is practically instant. Then there were some Lenovo automatic updates. Once they finally got into the computer, they discovered that all the files on their Desktop and files under Documents were missing. All that was left was two files on the Desktop and two under Documents out of dozens that were there on Friday when they shut down. Also all their settings like browser bookmarks and Skype login were missing/blank.

At first I thought that the profile had been switched from Roaming to Local. So I checked, but it was still set to Roaming. So I had them log into another computer, to see if it would pull down their documents. No luck, they just saw those same 4 files under Desktop and Documents.

I looked on the server under \\storageserver\profiles$\greg but that folder is completely empty. I then tried to look under \\storageserver\profiles$\greg.V2 but it says Access is Denied. I've since learned that is due to some group permissions that need to be set up prior to the creation of the user folders.

Does anyone know why the files would disappear? If they are still around, where could they be?

Possibly important: The only other things that has happened on that computer is that the computer name was changed to something more descriptive six days ago. They have logged off and shutdown many times since then, so can't see how that would be the issue that caused this? Not sure if changing the name back would make the files appear again?

No one else here has had issues with the roaming profiles or files disappearing. This is also the first time this has happened to my knowledge. This is also the only laptop here that is that model of Lenovo, and got whatever those updates were.

Best Answer

I wasn't able to figure out why the files disappeared from the user's profile. What I did instead was run EaseUS (deleted file restoration software) on the server that contained the roaming profiles and recover the files that way.