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This is my last resort, I've contacted my IT guy and hes not seeing a solid solution other than me sending my drive out to a place that can do low level data recovery besides some shot-in-the-dark troubleshooting. I have looked through every Microsoft community post there is about this, including the commonly shared tenfourums pages, past superuser questions etc.

My admin account is corrupted and my files are seemingly lost. What I care about is downloads and Desktop, which is where I had everything stored. The space used/available my C:\ drive has not changed which leads me to hope that the files are still somewhere on the drive, just inaccesable in file explorer/directories. Kinda like an astronaut that went out on a spacewalk but his tether got severed: Still out there, but the ship cant get to him. Another reason why I think they're still there is because my lockscreen wallpaper for that profile has remained, and the image for it was stored in a subfolder in my downloads folder.

The C:\Users\ folder for the profile might as well empty, only containing stuff from OneDrive, an AppData folder with subfolders that look to be primarily system related, and intel graphics profiles.

Went in to registry editor, theres a .bak folder for my profiles SID; no original. the ProfileImagePath for it matches the C:\users[user] folder. Problem is, so does the value data.

Most solutions available for a corrupted profile are steps to rectify when the profile folder path is not correct (e.g. the value data/user folder that ProfileImagePath points to does not match its corresponding user folder = files present but inaccessible until filepath matches). The fix with this is just to correct it.

There are no solutions that I can find for when the profile folder path does match other than that it is an indication that the profile files are corrupted and unusable; which means I'd have to build the profile from scratch.

I've scaned my C: drive using GetDataBack for NTFS (scanned with the setting for recovering corrupted disks as well as deleted files; have yet to attempt any other scan types). Still, nothing in the profile's user folder. I'm about to run it with Exessive Search turned on.

My question is: Is my profile completely hosed? Does anyone have any experience where a profile corruption has been this bad/unusual.

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    Strong recommendation: Stop using the drive. Each attempt to salvage data may destroy more. Make a forensic (verbatim) backup of the drive, and then salvage as much data as feasible from the copy. If the data is very valuable, worth the cost, try commercial data salvage, which would have tools and expertise to do better -- but get estimates on cost and chance of success. As for the profile, it's pointless to try to salvage, unless you've made disk images previous to the issue.
    – DrMoishe Pippik
    Commented May 30 at 23:07
  • In this instance, correct terminology matters - the User Profile isn't corrupt if the account can be logged into and the account operates normally without issue. User data directories within %UserProfile% are a part of the User Profile, but they can't corrupt one AFAIK. When a User Profile is corrupt, the only solution is to create a new user and copy data over, as the data remains accessible. This sound more like run of the mill data loss due to a failing drive or some kind of inadvertent action
    – JW0914
    Commented May 31 at 2:32
  • (Cont'd...) When a User Profile is corrupt, it can't be rebuilt, as there"s no way to rebuild a corrupted User Profile; once corrupted, the only solution is to create a new user and copy all data from old to the new. The user data directories [Documents, Downloads, etc] can't corrupt a user profile since they'll be auto recreated if accidentally deleted; the OS files that can corrupt a User Profile are the registry hive, hard links, a few other OS files, and some directories within AppData
    – JW0914
    Commented May 31 at 2:40

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My question is: is my profile completely hosed?

From your description of the errors and loss of data: Yes most definitely your user profile is so corrupt you cannot repair it.

For completeness. if documents are recoverable (does not appear easy here) you can possibly build a new User Profile (back it up, delete it, build a new one and recover your documents).

However in this case, you will need to follow the advice to use a data recovery agency.

Then do a proper fresh install of Windows, install your Apps, and add back any recovered data and documents).

I keep important documents backed up daily and email weekly using Sync Back Pro. I suggest an approach such as this in future.

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    "you can possibly repair a User Profile" I think this was intended differently, but for factual accuracy, corrupt User Profiles cannot be recovered - there literally is no way to repair one. The user data directories are a part of the User Profile, but they don't corrupt one - the registry hive, OS hard links, a few other OS files, and directories within %UserProfile%\AppData can/do.
    – JW0914
    Commented May 31 at 2:23
  • What I noted in this case is only if documents can be retrieved which in this case are not. So the sentence was included for completeness but here I also pointed out what to do if not.
    – anon
    Commented May 31 at 10:25

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