Windows 10: Desktop files deleted after a few other weird events

Hey there Microsoft Community! I hope you are all doing well amidst this COVID pandemic.


I use an ASUS TP300L, Windows 8.1 Single Language, Intel Core i3. 64-bit if that may be a necessary piece of information.


Okay so this started 2 or 3 hours ago. I'm gonna describe what happened as detailed as possible because I am not the best when it comes to computers. I was playing NBA 2k then I got bored so I decided to switch to Hitman: Absolution. When I started Hitman, a notification popped up that the steam_api.dll file was missing, so I copied the same file from another game I had. I tried to run Hitman again, it said another steam file was missing so I did the same thing, copied that missing file to Hitman's folder.


My laptop is pretty slow so whenever I want to play a game, I sometimes restart it because it runs faster that way. When I restarted, upon entering my password, the screen said that it was installing apps and that I could download more apps from the app store. I assumed it was an OS update but it's weird because I'm on Windows 8.1, when there's already Windows 10. Unless that's normal. Anyway, when my desktop finally showed, a status bar appeared saying "C:\Windows\system32\config\systemprofile\Desktop is unavailable. If location is on this PC......".


So I looked at my files in Drive C and D, they were all still there, but the links to Desktop, Downloads, Pictures, Music, and Videos were all dead. When opened through the Users>USER path, everything was still there. I applied a fix wherein you manually set the path to the Desktop, and it worked my Desktop was back to normal. But the taskbar lost all of its quick launch icons I set, Google Chrome appeared as if it had just been newly installed: when I go to Facebook, my account isn't there anymore, bookmarks are gone, history is gone, typing usual sites in the address bar doesn't autofill anymore, etc. Opened up Windows Defender as well and removed all viruses detected. Am currently running a full scan as we speak.


I restarted my laptop again. Upon logging on, my desktop was again empty, but the error did not appear anymore. The quick links at the left side of explorer were fine but my desktop was empty already. I tried searching for one of the folders I remember having on the desktop, search turned zero results. So basically, after just fixing the path to the desktop, now my desktop files were deleted. And weirdly, my taskbar quick launch icons are back, Google Chrome is also back to normal function as if nothing happened.


And that leads to this moment now that I am typing this.


> Has anybody else experienced this?

> Is this a virus?

> Is there any way I can recover the files that were on the desktop before? Two of the folders I lost were school files : I've already checked the recycle bin they are not there.
> Do I have to reformat my laptop?


I'd appreciate any and all help right now. I'm not the best when it comes to computers I only know how to use them.

:)

 

Cant Delete Files From Desktop

Well, ran into a weird bug with vista, for some reason i cant delete files from desktop, this normaly happens to .exe files, the ONLY fix seems to be to KILL explorer.exe, and delete the file, then restat explorer, anybody got any idea why this happens?

 

windows 10 deleted my desktop files

Step 1 - I upgraded to Win 10 and lost all my files on Desktop.

Step 2 - Found the files in Network - USers- Desktop

copied all files again to desktop.

Step 3- Restarted my machine again and lost desktop files again.

Step 4 - As suggested did the following as listed below but dont find my files.

• Press “Windows + E”, open This PC/Computer
• Open Local Disc C, open Windows.old
• Click on Users, select your User name
• Go to desktop folder

Cant find my files. Why is Win 10 deleted files again and again from Desktop ?.

 

Export All Administrative Events to Excel

To analyze events, from the Windows Event Viewer, there is a simple way to export all Administrative Events to Excel, with PowerShell.

Exporting all Administrative Events to Excel is a simple two Step process, as described here:

Step 1 - Create the Administrative Events View .xml file

1. Open Eventviewer (%windir%\system32\eventvwr.msc)
2. Navigate to: Event Viewer (Local) > Custom Views > Administrative Events
3. In the “Actions” pane select “Filter Current Custom View”.
4. Select the the XML tab.
5. Press Ctrl+A to select all the XML code of the Custom View.
6. Open a notepad, paste the selected code and save the file to your Desktop as AdmEvtView.xml

Step 2 - Create the csv file with the events

1. Download the ExportEvtCSV.zip file, which contains the script ExportEvtCSV.ps1 and unzip it, on your Desktop.
   It's not a fancy script, just basic PowerShell commands to create a csv file on the Desktop.
2. In Windows Search, type “ISE” (without the quotes) to open “Windows PowerShell ISE” and Run as administrator
   
3. To allow running the script, change the ExecutionPolicy, for this session. To do that, in the Console pane type:
   Code:
4. In the Windows PowerShell ISE, open and run the script: ExportEvtCSV.ps1
   The script will create a csv file with a name YYYYMMDD.HHMM.csv on the Desktop
5. When done, open the newly created .csv file, format the columns as needed and optionally save it as .xlsx, if you wish.

That’s it! You now have all the Administrative Events in Excel for filtering and further analysis.

Now to the more technical hard stuff... *Confused

There is a reason for running the script from within PowerShell ISE!

It would be great if everything was also working perfectly, when running the script from an elevated PowerShell too.

We can run it from an elevated PowerShell, which means that you just follow the Step 1, as above but for the Step 2 instead of the ISE you run the script from an elevated PowerShell.

The problem is that it will work only for anybody who has en-US format for the dates. Everyone else, who has another format (i.e. en-GB, fr-FR, el-GR etc.), the dates are not translated properly by Excel (although the script uses the –UseCulture switch) and remain as text in the en-US format.

I'm not sure if this a bug of the "export-csv" cmdlet, but although it runs the way it supposed to from within the ISE, from PowerShell there is a problem with the dates format.
As I haven’t found a way to overcome this obstacle, any suggestion from the PowerShell gurus of the forum (like my good friend Shawn @Brink, for instance), is welcome.