Win7 RTM Install Deleted My Music

[usercjem]

HP 2730p laptop

RTM (MSDN download site) Win 7 Ultimate

Upgrade from Vista Ultimate, which was originally a clean install

Vista Ultimate Documents folder had copy of WinXP user account folders like My Music, etc.

Vista Ultimate user account folder has the Music folder.

I upgraded and after the upgrade both the original music folders point to non-existant folders and all my music files are deleted, lost or do not know where they are. I believe they were deleted because my drive had more space after the install than it did before the install. Prior to install/upgrade, drive had 16.9GB space. After the upgrade, the drive has 18.8GB space.

Please help in locating old music.

Thank you.

[ripken204]

search your drive for *.mp3

or if you know an artist or song title search for that

[usercjem]

Confirmed that the files were deleted. My directory setup with the legacy My Documents folder from WinXP days confused the install process. How do I file a bug against MSFT. This sucks and I am a MSFT Fanboy !!!!

[Ronin]

Check in your Windows.old folder.

[jcarle]

I don't see how your music would have been deleted, but a thorough search of your hard drive will show you.

I can't reiterate enough the importance of backups.

[Guest]

See if you can recover them with Restoration.

Just a suggestion but never keep your data on the OS partition. Make a separate partition for that and back up that partition to a 2nd physical drive.

[JustinStacey.x]

Check in your Windows.old folder.

Word to this. I upgraded from XP to Vista at work and afterwards I thought 'hang on a minute, this all looks a little too clean to be true'... and then I found everything under the Windows.old folder. Unfortunately upgrades nowadays are not as clean as in the 9x/ME/XP days when everything literally stayed in its place.

[usercjem]

Recovered files from WHS backup, which was done prior to upgrade. Music was definitely deleted (3.45GB worth) during the install. Somebody needs to tell MSFT about this RTM bug.

Note: There was no Windows.old folder.

Thank you for your help.

[jcarle]

Are you sure you didn't do a clean install instead of an upgrade?

[macgyvr]

If there was no windows.old folder, then you definitely did NOT do an upgrade. You did a clean install or formatted the partition when that screen was presented.

[usercjem]

It might be appropriate to think that I did a clean install by mistake vs. a real upgrade; though, I can assure you that is not the case. I performed the upgrade when Vista was running. The install spent 1.5 hours looking and updating my current files. Lastly, all the previous local computer accounts (non-standard) were preserved and migrated to the Win7.

Aside for my account which had the WinXP default folder structure present under the Vista Documents folders, all other accounts were structured as a normal Vista default folder set. There was even music in another accounts Music folder and that was preserved. Therefore, I still assert that Win7 upgrade messed up. I also came across people complaining that .mp3 files were being deleted by Win7 RC image. I never used the RC image but the Win7 RTM image definitely deleted my music files.

I cannot comment why there is no windows.old folder.

THank you everyone for your comments and help.

[Mr Snrub]

So if I have this right, you had a clean installation of Windows Vista Ultimate, and in your user profile under Documents you had a folder structure from an old Windows XP profile, so something like:

C:\Users\msfncjem\Documents\My Documents

C:\Users\msfncjem\Documents\My Music

C:\Users\msfncjem\Documents\My Pictures

...etc.

The MP3s that went astray - were they under C:\Users\msfncjem\Documents\My Music or C:\Users\msfncjem\Music ?

Interestingly, I just tried to create a "My Music" folder under C:\Users\MrSnrub\Documents on a Vista SP2 machine and it pops up the message:

Move Folder

The files in New Folder will be moved to C:\Users\MrSnrub\Music.

New Folder

Date created: 2009-08-10 11:25

On clicking OK, the folder vanishes.

On clicking Cancel, the folder is created but named "New Folder".

So I wonder how you managed to get a folder named "My Music" into the Documents folder in the first place...

...after the upgrade both the original music folders point to non-existant folders...

Non-existent how?

Empty, or throw an error if you try to access them?

[theory]

I suspect that if the data had been migrated correctly from XP to Vista, the "My Music" folder contents would have been redirected to the Music folder directly in the user profile and you wouldn't have had any problem, but that during the upgrade the profile was parsed and Documents\My Music was implicitly redirected to Music, which was empty and so migrated nothing...

[/theory]

[Mr Snrub]

KB953940 shows a scenario where an XP to Vista upgrade can throw some odd issues with the "My Music" > Music migration - I realise you said this was a clean Vista installation, but this is also why I cannot see how you managed to get the old XP profile under Documents in the first place...

The article mentions the following path used during the Vista upgrade, ir might be worth checking if a Win7 upgrade creates a similar folder when migrating user data:

%SystemDrive%\$INPLACE.~TR\Machine\DATA\Documents and Settings\<username>

(A WINDOWS.OLD folder would imply a clean installation on the same volume as a previous Windows install, not an in-place upgrade, that's why you don't have one - but there may well be a "$INPLACE.~TR" folder...)

[Mr Snrub]

Okay, I did an in-place upgrade of Vista x64 SP2 to Win7 x64 RTM after creating some dummy files in the Documents and Music folders in the user profile.

The profile contents were successfully migrated, and there were 2 hidden folders created in the root: $INPLACE.~TR and $WINDOWS.~Q.

I had to change the Folder Options to show hidden files and folders, and then grant myself permission to access the 2 folders when prompted, then I was able to browse them.

Take a look and see if you can find those folders, and do a search for *.mp3 when you are in them in Explorer...

[usercjem]

Thank you for the excellent feedback and ideas.

Based on the last theory, I revisited my laptop history notes. I have 10 laptops in the house so I can forget at times. This specific laptop was not a clean Vista Ultimate install. The history is as follows:

- OEM WinXP was installed on HP tc4400

- After 1 yr, in place using Vista Ultimate MSDN

- Vista had moved my WinXP default folders under the Vista Documents folder and created shortcuts. Some shortcuts worked and the others did not. I fixed everything up.

- After 6 months, added drivers for HP 2730p

- Vista image backup to WHS

- Vista image then applied to HP 2730p using the restore process from WHS

- HP tc4400 laptop was deprecated

- After 1 yr, in place upgrade to Win7 Ultimate MSDN

- Music files are lost. Searched for *.mps files but not found.

- Checked %SystemDrive%\$INPLACE.~TR\Machine\DATA\Documents and Settings\<username> and the files are located there. THANK YOU!!

Other oddities after the upgrade:

- There are some shortcuts created like c:\users\<name>\Music pointing to itself but if you click on it, it says that I don't have permissions. This happened for My Picturus also. I can access My Pictures directly but not through the short cut which points to it too. I deleted all this junk and cleaned up the directory structure.

- C:\users\<name>\My Pictures or Libraries\Pictures points to c:\users\<name>\Searches\My Pictures

- I have tried deleting the My Pictures folder instances but each time I logout and relogin, Pictures default locationg seems to be unders the Searches folder. This might be by design but seems the oddest thing to do from a user perpective.

Edited August 10, 2009 by msfncjem