Windows 8.1 refreshed and I lost many files! Help please!

Hey.

What happened was that iTunes asked for an update, so I did. Afterwards it said I must restart my PC to apply the updates. I did that and Windows also updated.

Afterwards my laptop would not start up. It would attempt to but then it would fail and show the blue screen with the sad smiley.

This happened multiple times and windows automatically troubleshooted the problem and found nothing.

It then gave me options to try again, refresh my PC, or reset my PC.

I clicked on refresh PC because it said I will not lose files yet I lost many things I had downloaded.

I tried to restore to a point but the only option was a restore point 2 minutes ago.

Is it possible to restore to an early date such as yesterday or before?

I really need my files back, thanks in advance.

Do not think that would be possible as those restore points were deleted during refresh. Good rule is to backup files, documents,videos and pictures all the time in case of any failures. As far as files look here
Retrieve files from the Windows.old folder - Windows Help

Always maintain your own backups of important files, 2 or more backup copies of particularly important files. Never rely on assurances that no data will be lost. There are too many ways that mistakes can be made, too many ways that things can go wrong.

LMiller7 said:

Always maintain your own backups of important files, 2 or more backup copies of particularly important files. Never rely on assurances that no data will be lost. There are too many ways that mistakes can be made, too many ways that things can go wrong.

Click to expand...

Been doing that myself having 2 sources were backups are kept. Sure Data recovery services may have ways to retrieve files off disk, not familiar with that and cost involved and to even say worth it by how important those files were to do so.

Easuse Data recovery (might need technician version )

if you don't do anything else with your hard drive but you probably have done a lot with it since this happened..

create a boot usb/cd and boot from there and run Easuse data recovery from the usb/cd boot disk... then run easuse data recovery and search on your C: drive..