Reloaded Windows and lost my files

R

rickmark

Bit poster
Parallels 6, Snow Leopard, Windows 7 -- Instead of getting the usual Windows icon to click on startup, I got a question mark and a message that said I must have deleted or removed files, which is possible. So I reloaded my Windows 7 disk. Now I can start Parallels and run Windows 7. But I can't get to my previous files. What do I do?

I found a reference to Parallets Mounter. Found that, but nothing happens when I click on it.

Help?

Parallels support system is disgraceful, by the way. Even signing on to this forum proved ridiculously difficult.
 
When you were using your original VM, did you have it setup so that the My Documents folder etc was mapped to your Mac Documents folder etc?
 
probably not

I didn't know you could "map" the Windows document folder to the Mac folder. So, probably not.

If I wanted to see what was on the Windows side, I started Parallels, started Windows, and looked in the C drive.

Thanks for responding.

Some older discussions on this forum referred to Parallels Explorer, which apparently was replaced by Parallels Mounter. Is that something that might find by invisible files (if they still exist)?

It seems as if the Windows reboot installed a new version of Windows (from my disc, I mean) and made the original documents go away. Or hid them somewhere. I definitely did not delete the older files.
 
rickmark said:
I didn't know you could "map" the Windows document folder to the Mac folder. So, probably not.

If I wanted to see what was on the Windows side, I started Parallels, started Windows, and looked in the C drive.

Thanks for responding.

Some older discussions on this forum referred to Parallels Explorer, which apparently was replaced by Parallels Mounter. Is that something that might find by invisible files (if they still exist)?

It seems as if the Windows reboot installed a new version of Windows (from my disc, I mean) and made the original documents go away. Or hid them somewhere. I definitely did not delete the older files.
Click to expand...

I've not had any experience with Parallels Mounter or anything similar unfortunately so can't answer that.

However, if you installed Windows again over the same VM, there's a high chance it removed the files during the installation. Do you have Time Machine setup? If so could you go back to an older version and run it up to get your files?
 
oh, darn

Thanks again. Guess I was afraid of that.

I should note that I use Windows only for very specific tasks and as little as possible. While I would very much like to retrieve the lost files, I wouldn't say they're critical. So I'll live.

Now ... as for Time Machine, I've looked through there and I have found older versions of my Windows folders, but none of them seem to be my document files. I retrieved a folder that's labeled "Windows 7 2 (1) Applications" ... and it's full of applications. I'm not finding documents. At least ... not the fairly large folder that had the documents I particularly need. There's a lot of auxiliary stuff I don't care about.
 
update - many files retrieved

In case anyone cares, I spent the $20 to get Parallels phone support. It helped. I was able to retrieve a lot of my files but not all of them.

For some reason that I still don't understand, I found my stored Windows documents in a Time Machine backup from December. It appears that I may have inadvertently instructed Time Machine to not back up my Virtual Machine after that date. I don't know how I could have done that.

In any case, the support person helped me copy my old .pvm file from December, and many of my files were in there. I've lost everything from December on. I'll live.

To prevent this in the future, I found that I needed to rearrange my Windows documents in the VM C-drive. I had created a folder that appeared in the first tier of documents when you open the C-drive. I now have moved all of my working documents to the Documents folder that's found in the Windows Library folder.

When I backed up my machine again and checked Time Machine, all of my new document folders were there. So I don't think I'll lose them again.

Another thing that's happened - since I re-installed Windows and created a new VM, all of my Windows operations are working MUCH more smoothly and quickly. My Windows work had become disturbingly slow and balky. That problem seems to have been fixed.
 
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