HELP! Lost files when transferred from Windows 7

When I transferred from Windows 7, I lost some (very important) personal files. I have searched and tried a few different things and the best I can find is to run a file recovery software which I'm hoping to avoid. I'm running Windows 8 off a Toshiba that so far I have loved but am quickly starting to regret switching to 8. Any advice is much appreciated!!

Open File Explorer to Drive C and look for "Windows.old/Users"

It'll all be in there. If you did not update from Windows 7 to 8, if you did a clean install, this will happen. I've updated 3 machines from Windows 7 to 8, lost nothing.

Sometimes, even if you did update from 7 directly to 8, it may have made a "Windows.Old" folder, so check in there.

But just in case the files are not there, use this:

Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download

Point it to where the files were, use "Show All files" and do a Deep Scan, it will take over an hour to do in some cases.

Also, just in case you may have used any "recover" option (usually F11) on a store bought machine, it will restore all of your original files, deleting all personal files. If you did this before updating to Windows 8, sorry, they are gone.