So the kid just deleted his entire W10 C drive.
No recycle bin etc. deleted from explorer …

I’m away until Tuesday (Monday night) so no big rush but equally can’t really answer any helpful suggestions.

Current aim is to remove the drive when I’m home and stick it into another desktop then use some recovery software when I get back. It’s switched off and staying that way till I remove the drive.

No separate Windows key anywhere (came pre-installed) or any other licences for his game software… so main aim is recovering these. (Whatever they turn out to be)

All the software I used to use has moved on (seems to have been bought/sold/rebought) so I’m looking for the best way. Don’t mind paying a bit … for reliability so recommendations?

You can’t delete a drive from explorer and I’d be extremely surprised if windows let you format it. It may have become corrupted, in which case the windows repair tools might sort it, or if windows still starts and or is running, it’s just hidden

He’s deleted the entire windows folders… I fully expect the drive is still assigned and the boot sector will be intact but nowhere to boot to.

As above, it doesn’t quite like your getting the whole story but hey ho… The windows license key will be registered with your hardware, re-install windows (not before trying to recover any gaming keys) & select the “I don’t have a product key”, it will pick up the key from the MS servers during the install. It’s been a while since I did any gaming but shirely most games are via the like of a steam accounts, and will be registered there, or be recoverable via the online purchase receipts? (or registered to the email addy)

No separate Windows key anywhere

The hardware has been registered, you won’t need a Windows key to reinstall.

I would try downloading the appropriate version of Windows from the Microsoft website using a different machine and making a bootable USB installation stick (if you search for Windows 10 installation files, you’ll be taken to the webpage that will do this for you). Then boot from that and try doing a repair installation. You should be able to recover it.

If that doesn’t detect the previous installation and offer to repair it, it might be worth booting to the BIOS setup and checking that the drive is listed. BIOS settings vary between manufacturers and can be strange things sometimes so Googling for your specific motherboard and problem would be the way to go.

As above, it doesn’t quite like your getting the whole story but hey ho…

Well probably not but no Windows folders hence no explorer … he said it asked him to proceed without recovery as it was too large… but yeah 13yr olds and whole stories ???

The windows license key will be registered with your hardware, re-install windows (not before trying to recover any gaming keys)

OK, first bit good…. its the last bit that I need to do first I guess I still need.

The hardware has been registered, you won’t need a Windows key to reinstall.

one less thing then …

I would try downloading the appropriate version of Windows from the Microsoft website using a different machine and making a bootable USB installation stick (if you search for Windows 10 installation files, you’ll be taken to the webpage that will do this for you). Then boot from that and try doing a repair installation. You should be able to recover it.

Already did that and its sat waiting… but I was/am a bit dubious about doing that until I’ve recovered whatever was on there. I’m sure its all still physically there as its NTFS so it will just be marked deleted and the whatever NTFS calls iNodes unlinked…

It’s been a while since I did any gaming but shirely most games are via the like of a steam accounts, and will be registered there, or be recoverable via the online purchase receipts? (or registered to the email addy)

I’m hoping so… I don’t get involved (usually) so I’m not really sure what he had or didn’t but he spends a stupid amount of money on these games.

W10 C drive.
No recycle bin etc. deleted from explorer …

I’m not sure we’ve got the full picture here either..explorer is an integral part of windows, so you can’t have deleted the c drive? I think your gonna have to look at it in the flesh to try and see whats going on.
Maybe a windows repair could work but it’s just guessing without knowing more.

I’m not sure we’ve got the full picture here either..explorer is an integral part of windows, so you can’t have deleted the c drive?

Why not ?it doesn’t run off the disk it runs from memory… but by the time he came and got me he’d tried running a windows update .. I tried to start explorer from the run menu thing… but its gone hence as far as I got.
but as far as he explained he ran the delete as administrator and was meaning to delete some temp files…

I’m waiting for mates to arrive to give me a lift to Wales so any deeper look will have to be after that as its probably not something is going to improve by dabbling about.

Why not ?it doesn’t run off the disk it runs from memory…

No it doesn’t. What you’re saying he’s describing is a nonsense, it’s simply not possible on a number of levels. It’s like saying someone’s stolen your bike and now the brakes don’t work.

Find out what actually happened and come back with a proper description of symptoms, then we can work out what to do about it.

As others have said, the licence key isn’t a worry.

If it’s prebuilt there is usually a recovery image hidden on a partition of the drive. Without going through a very specific set of clicks it’s highly unlikely this has been deleted. Have a look online for your desktop + “recovery environment”

he’d tried running a windows update

If windows has been deleted from the C (system) drive, you cant run a windows update, or use a run command as they are all part of windows too…none of this is making any sense, lol

Regarding the game licences – how are they stored?

Most games I have played from the past 10+ years have licences attached to an online account of some sort. Chances are this is the case?

No it doesn’t. What you’re saying he’s describing is a nonsense, it’s simply not possible on a number of levels. It’s like saying someone’s stolen your bike and now the brakes don’t work.

Nope its like someone saying they just cut the branch off they were stood on with a chainsaw and saying but that’s impossible…

Find out what actually happened and come back with a proper description of symptoms, then we can work out what to do about it.

I doubt he remembers every detail.. he was trying to free up space on the boot drive and I fully expect following any instructions google says about “how to delete a file windows won’t let you” in no specific order and whilst doing 20 other things.
windows update needed space hence why he had it open ..

The system won’t boot …. so short of removing the drive and looking from another PC I’m not seeing how to find out more without doing that..

Given the windows key seems restorable and nearly all his game keys and licenses are online it might just be easier to just do that… it’s not like he has actual work stuff on the PC ..

somewhere on my backups from a previous life I have a 100 plus page major incident report from a major multinational and a whole blame exercise on how a entire redundant RAID volume on snapshotted NAS with a full redundant offsite copy got deleted… the report didn’t restore a single file though.

Short summary of the report is when management won’t invest and the IT dept. are running everything on a shoestring with band aids and sticking plasters and forced to bypass safety mechanisms on a daily basis shit happens.

On the other hand removing the physical disk and rebuilding the allocation tables restored 95% of it… hence my initial focus on restoring it.

In this case he was bypassing anything trying to free up space… not a million miles off what happened in the report I mentioned.

Nope its like someone saying they just cut the branch off they were stood on with a chainsaw and saying but that’s impossible…

It’s really not. It’s more like saying I broke the chainsaw by chainsawing it with itself.

I doubt he remembers every detail..

What he remembers isn’t all that important. What’s relevant is an accurate description of symptoms.

The system won’t boot …. so short of removing the drive and looking from another PC I’m not seeing how to find out more without doing that..

“Won’t boot” isn’t helpful. Why? What are you seeing? Do you get an error message?

My car won’t start. This could mean variously:
Going ‘click’ when I turn the key
Turning over but not firing
Having four flat tyres
I’ve lost the key
It’s on fire
It’s actually a bike
It’s been stolen

Given the windows key seems restorable and nearly all his game keys and licenses are online it might just be easier to just do that… it’s not like he has actual work stuff on the PC ..

It likely is.

somewhere on my backups from a previous life I have a 100 plus page major incident report from a major multinational and a whole blame exercise on how a entire redundant RAID volume on snapshotted NAS with a full redundant offsite copy got deleted… the report didn’t restore a single file though.

Is Cougar actually getting grumpier in his unofficial role of STW Users IT Support? 🙃

No, I’ve always been grumpy, I just used to be better at hiding it. 😁

In all seriousness, I’m trying to help (and I hope I’ve exchanged sufficient discourse with the OP previously that he realises this). But just as ‘support’ is a skill, so is ‘being supported’. A problem description of “it doesn’t work” backed up with little more than the second-hand witterings of a 13-year old isn’t particularly useful. As Roy Walker often said, “say what you see.” It doesn’t boot how? It doesn’t boot why? What does it do?

Because, it is not possible to solve a problem beyond blind luck unless we’ve first clearly defined what that problem is. Based on the information given here so far, Steve’s suggestion of blatting it and reinstalling from scratch is probably the best course of action and will almost certainly work, but it is a guess. It’s a guess I’d have high confidence in, but I would rather know.

Hey, I wonder if there’s a market for Tech Support in the style of this restaurant? I could be rich.

https://www.bemorekaren.com/

I bid “he’s tried to be clever and dropped the windows partition using a 3rd party app”

Teach him a lesson, make him fix it from within a a live Linux environment.

Cougar

A problem description of “it doesn’t work” backed up with little more than the second-hand witterings of a 13-year old isn’t particularly useful.

That’s all I get out of the 13yr old…
I’m surprised he even asked me but there we are.
Ultimately the only thing of any value are the games though so we just blitzed it reinstalled from USB installer and he can go through and restore stuff.

sobriety

I bid “he’s tried to be clever and dropped the windows partition using a 3rd party app”

Entirely possible..as are pretty much any and all of the above.

Teach him a lesson, make him fix it from within a a live Linux environment.

I think he’d quite enjoy that….

That’s all I get out of the 13yr old…

Oh, sure. I just assumed that at some point, you’d look at it first hand and then have a better idea.

Glad you’re sorted.

“Won’t boot” isn’t helpful. Why? What are you seeing? Do you get an error message?

My car won’t start. This could mean variously:
Going ‘click’ when I turn the key
Turning over but not firing
Having four flat tyres
I’ve lost the key
It’s on fire
It’s actually a bike
It’s been stolen

Hi fellow IT support guy *waves*

Story of my life 🙂

“The program crashes”
“Feature X doesn’t work can you fix it”
etc etc etc…

Former support guy, but yes. 😁

Plenty of people aren’t very technically literate and I get that, it’s absolutely fine. I can’t complain too loudly because it kept me in employ for a couple of decades. I’ll talk to those people all day as they’re usually a joy to work with. Calls that open with “I don’t know much about computers but…” were almost certainly going to be a breeze.

Back when I was supporting the Great Unwashed there were two shibboleths that you were about to have a nightmare. The first was professional people – doctors, teachers, managers, directors, generally those people who were used to being the smartest person in the room and couldn’t handle having to ask someone else for assistance. The second was the wilfully ignorant; the ones who were proud of the fact that they didn’t understand something; the ones who had catastrophic common sense failure, and thought that this was hilarious.

A genuine example from my support days: User reports that she got an error message. “Well, that’s great,” I reply, “what did it say?” She tells me that she didn’t understand it so she closed it. 🤦‍♂️ You don’t have to understand it, that’s why you rang support, you just have to read it. Then she comes out with something akin to “I don’t like this computer shit.” It was an Excel query, she worked in Finance. Quite senior, IIRC.

As I said earlier, reporting issues is a skill in itself. Plenty of people aren’t used to doing it and that’s perfectly understandable. But you wouldn’t go to the doctor, the doctor asks what seems to be the problem and you reply “you tell me, you’re the doctor”. Throw us a bone here!

(for the avoidance of doubt, this is a generic whinge from 15 years ago and unrelated to any STW denizens)

Oh, sure. I just assumed that at some point, you’d look at it first hand and then have a better idea.

I would have but it looked like being a rabbit hole.
Once I’d got it in my head that there really wasn’t anything of value to lose it just seemed easier to do the nuclear option.

TBH, it’s likely what I’d have done unless I particularly saw it as a challenge.

I’ve spent hours, days, weeks of my life recovering hosed PCs. I used to take it as a personal failing if I couldn’t repair the OS or remove the malware or whatever to bring them back to life. Today, meh, life’s too short. A rebuild is trivial and we all get to learn an important life lesson about backups.

Plenty of people aren’t very technically literate and I get that, it’s absolutely fine.

My favourite IT story, well I have lots, but this is an insight into Nigerian logic…

I have a SW tool I’ve written to do some design stuff and we had a Nigerian employee who was taking ages to do stuff, so I went to find out why. He was trying to do a complex optimisation by hand, so I asked him ‘Why don’t you just click on the Optimise button?’ to which he replied ‘It doesn’t work’. So I asked what happened when he clicked on the button and he replied ‘I haven’t clicked on it as there’s no point, because it doesn’t work’. So then ‘have you ever clicked on the button?’, to which he replied ‘No.’.

Can’t say I miss dealing with Africa on a daily basis….

Once I’d got it in my head that there really wasn’t anything of value to lose it just seemed easier to do the nuclear option.

TBF, thats what we do in cooperate IT.. we know user data is backed up non locally, email, sharepoint etc, so hardware fault aside, we just flatten the operating system and resinstall a standard windows image that has been side loaded with all basic apps, office, Acrobat etc.

Ok, it means probably an hour or two of downtime for that 1 user, but it’s a guarenteed fix. Trying to diagnose something is kind of a dying art as you could be pratting about for hours and hours, so on balance it actually minimises overall average downtime if you’re dealing with an estate of hundreds/thousands of PC’s.

But it is a prerequisite that all critical data/docs are stored/backed up, and not residing on the users PC.

Plenty of people aren’t very technically literate and I get that, it’s absolutely fine. I can’t complain too loudly because it kept me in employ for a couple of decades. I’ll talk to those people all day as they’re usually a joy to work with. Calls that open with “I don’t know much about computers but…” were almost certainly going to be a breeze.

Back in the dark days of working on premium telephone support for an internet provider that got quite popular by doing true pay as you go dialup, I can concur those people are always the best. To someone who would listen to description and look at what was on screen I could confidently talk them through a full setup of their connection in under ten minutes. Cost to them, under a fiver.

There were some groups though that were always difficult. The complainers. I was on the end of a telephone service for the first large internet provider who did not charge a monthly fee. Yet they still wanted to complain about having to pay for support. The irony is they were costing themselves money by complaining rather than letting me get on and fix their issues.

The wilfully ignorant. No matter how hard you tried, there was absolutely no way to explain to these people anything because they would. not. try. The only option there was direct them to a computer shop.

Finally, the hardest of the bunch were the ones who were not technically incompetant. They knew their way around a computer but didn’t know the specifics of internet connection. They would always be two steps ahead and invariably in the wrong place. They would thrive on demonstrating thier technical prowess while in fact just making the job of fixing their interner harder.

Those were not the days.

 it kept me in employ for a couple of decades.

You have waaaaay more tolerance that me.  If people would just tell you what they did and what they saw it can usually be solved in a few minutes.  Instead you have to get them to the point where they think you are stupid and have stuff described in simple words from the start so they describe what actually happened rather than what they wanted to happen.  And breath

But it’s a skill getting people to describe what they did, and I have no idea how to do it 🙁

If people would just tell you what they did and what they saw it can usually be solved in a few minutes.

They often can’t descibe what they did or didn’t do though, at least with anything that makes sense. See post #1.

They often can’t descibe what they did or didn’t do though, at least with anything that makes sense. See post #1.

Agreed. They don’t know what they are looking at. There is a post out there to do with squids that explains that I think.  I’m sure I found it here a long time ago

I used to have to re-build SIL’s PC regular when her son used to get it infected.

Cougar

TBH, it’s likely what I’d have done unless I particularly saw it as a challenge.

I’ve spent hours, days, weeks of my life recovering hosed PCs. I used to take it as a personal failing if I couldn’t repair the OS or remove the malware or whatever to bring them back to life. Today, meh, life’s too short. A rebuild is trivial and we all get to learn an important life lesson about backups.

That was me 10 years ago and like you say it teaches some goons a lesson. After the 2nd rebuild they usually learn.

What you’re saying he’s describing is a nonsense, it’s simply not possible on a number of levels.

I was curious about this so fired up a virtual machine with Windows 10.

You can drag the entire contents of the C: drive into the Recycle Bin. Windows says that you can’t recycle them, only delete. If you agree to this shortly afterward you’ll get a UMC prompt. If you approve this, you get about 30 seconds before the computer falls over.

So while it doesn’t help, you can do exactly what stevextc describes.

Well, if you will give a 13-year old Local Admin privs… 😁

With sufficient effort it’s possible to delete system files which aren’t locked and surely hose the system. The entire folder though? The entire drive as originally reported? No chance unless you’ve booted from elsewhere first.

You’re probably correct in so far as that’s what he’s tried to do.