Note this is a work computer that another user used last. I'm not sure what they did, but I'm trying to fix their mistakes. Its possible they downloaded a virus.
The only other recent changes were the installation of Java 32 bit and Java 64 bit, which have now been removed.
After the user rebooted/crashed the desktop, upon boot, the desktop was black with no icons except for the Recycling Bin. The taskbar was visible. Almost all non Microsoft software crashed with blank application icons. Chrome, VLC, all no longer work and are no longer listed in C:/Programs Files. Both C:/Program Files and C:/Program Files(x86) have been purged of all user installed software.
There are remnants that they were installed. The programs are still listed in the Control Panel's Uninstall a Program menu. The only application still working is Steam and Avira Antivirus.
All personal files are also deleted/missing. My Documents, My Downloads, My Music, My Pictures were all deleted. Trying to access them brings up an error C:/Users/Profile/Documents in unavailable. After looking around, both My Documents and My Desktop were found in the recycling bin and somewhat successfully restored. However all software is still missing.
As an odd aside, explorer.exe would only halfway load on startup. The taskbar and other explorer.exe features were working, but the actual File Explorer was not. Attempting to launch it caused an installation popup for Lenovo Hightails to open and repeatedly fail. It would crash explorer.exe and make it unresponsive. I believe this is a defunct piece of software that came with the Lenovo PC. After carefully manually removing Hightails from the Windows Install registry and its main registry location, I could not use explorer.exe and File Explorer. It's worth noting that Microsoft Edge does not work (it previously did) although Internet Explorer does. This was only to get explorer.exe working. All personal files and software was already deleted at this point.
At first it seemed like a hard drive error, however most Microsoft software works fine and My Documents was found in the Recycling bin...
I ran sfc /scannow and chkdsk /f. Both found errors which they said were successfully fixed. Nothing changed after the repairs. Booting into safe mode did not change anything.
Is it possible my Windows User profile is corrupt and not pointing to the correct file locations? My C:/Users/Profile/ only has the hidden .AppData folder. The normal Documents folder, etc have all been deleted. The .AppData folder seems correct and has remnants of the broken programs inside them. C:/Program Data also has folders showing that other software was installed. However the C:/Program Files folders are missing the relevant software.
For example, trying to launch 7zip brings up an error that the shortcut it refers to has changed or moved. There is a C:/Program Files/7-zip folder, but it only has a .dll and no other files or executables. Perhaps the virus couldn't delete this file? Chrome and all its folders and files appear to have been deleted.
Any help would be greatly appreciated! I'm fairly computer savvy and can answer questions for additional information.
Edited by Tiber, 05 December 2017 - 03:32 PM.