Finding missing folders (and files) in UEFI WIN10 laptop

[oldaolgeezer]

I don't use Win10 very often on my UEFI WIN10 laptop,
but during a recent week, I interspersed Puppy boots with
several Win10 boots.
I used Win10 once for updating my Garmin GPS maps and then several other times
while Zoom had a audio squealing problem on our Chromebook (since
fixed with a newer version of Chromebook Zoom) and now Puppy Zoom.

So, one week we had used Win10 a number of times and it found it need to do a Win10 update !
After what seemed to be three hours, Windows 10 update ended, which included many reboots,

Suddenly, I noticed that I could no longer find any of my Puppy Linux
folders (including hundreds family photos and ebook novels) on my one and only Windows 10 laptop!

I tried a number of the ten Puppies I had on this laptop and one
after the other, after they booted, their desktop showed the orange
triangles of missing target directories of my photos, ebooks and Puppy
hints and documentation files.

After a few curse words and contemplating the hours of recovery effort
finding all those files on my other PC's hard drives and flash drives that
would be needed and puzzling about how that could have happened
at all ......

Could I have accidentally moved my files by brushing the touchpad
while in Windows 10 or with RoxFiler while using Puppy ?

Eventually, I found all my data folders and files just where anyone
would expect them to be !

they were in:

"/Users/ownerslogonname/AppData/Roaming/Microsoft/Windows/Printer Shortcuts"

But of course the folder names in Windows syntax are:

"\Users\ownerslogonname\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Printer Shortcuts"

I was booted into Puppy already and "moved" my missing directory
to the hard drive's Windows partition sda3's root directory,
and then booted into each of the ten Puppy iso's I use on this laptop
and corrected their desktop's folder icons to point to my folder's
new location.
(This changed the orange triangles into the better "yellowish Manila" color ! )

Out of curiosity, I decided to search on Google for the unique Win10 directory string.

I was surprised to see a number of "help me" entries on websites
whimpering about the exact same chain of directories even on
windows 7, Windows 10 etc. !

You, yourself, might want to look down that directory chain on your
Windows PC's and see if you have any stuff in the final directory
in this chain of directories: "... ... \Printer Shortcuts"

also see: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... 8960423ce3

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... -variables

I can not remember now exactly where I had previously attached my
Puppy Linux files, but it may have been as a subdirectory of
Windows C:\Users\ ....

That position worked for many boots of various Puppy isos interspersed
with Win10 boots too for almost a year without difficulty !

But my scanning of the Google search above hints not to hang things off C:\Users.

Maybe this will help someone else.

[foxpup]

Thanks for this info.
It reads like a thriller.
I will have a look on my windows machines now.

[nic007]

I still use XP now and then. I've noticed that some installation progs just copies its whole application, etc. to some /usr...app location by default without user intervention and withouit notifying the user. It also dumps stuff there when the prog is in use. So it's not necessarily an operating system issue but rather the installation prog itself.