15 R3, Alienware deleted my Windows folder

Hi @ponlork welcome to this user to user discussion forum. This is not Dell Support. 

Starting with Windows 10 Anniversary Update, you can setup a dual boot configuration with another instance of Windows 10. It is not permitted by the license agreement, but it still activates. Microsoft's recommendation for remaining in compliance is to purchase an additional license agreement. 

Hindsight says that you should have created a clone (copy) of the original OS(C:) boot drive. Windows does not like having to choose between two drives with the same (identical) operating system and gets confused. The easy solution is to swap in the OS(C:) boot drive that you want to use, so there is only one operating system and create a 'shared' Data drive with your personal files. There are other options. 

Not sure if Restore will reinstate your personal files. The old files should have been saved somewhere in a file called something like old.windows when a new operating system is installed, but not sure if it did or if this included your personal files. 

Please click on Kudos to say thank you for response from user that is not employed by Dell. Please share an update on progress, so that other users derive benefit from your experience. Thank you. 

I originally backed up my Alienware sata hdd using clonezilla back in 2018. I used that to restore it to the new m.2 ssd and i was able to do a system reset with it and it worked. however there was a issue with the hard drive signature where both drives couldnt be displayed at the same time due to it having the same ID.

so the only way i could get it to work was to install a new Windows 10 on the M.2 SSD drive in order to be able to boot into both Hard drives in the boot option.

the method was working fine for about a week until today. I have a lot of programs installed on my sata hdd that I wasn't ready to move all that clutter to the freshly installed M.2 SSD drive yet so that's why I wanted to keep both drives seperate until I gradually get my M.2 SSD setup up all the apps and projects working properly.

At the moment I'm running a chkdsk on the drive, it's taking over 6 hours. In the past I was able to recover big files doing this method so hopefully this will work. If not, worst cast scenario will be to reset the Alienware and keep my files. Hopefully it'll be able to do that.

As for a old windows, there's no windows.old folder.

So I did a scan with a program called Getdataback and it found my Windows folder in the found.000 directory. the folder it named dir0000.chk. Do anybody know if it would be possible to copy this folder to my Hard drive and rename it Windows? or will that not work. I'll give it a try but just wondering if anybody has knowledge on it. Like maybe I should boot into recovery with command prompt instead or can I simply copy the data to the drive under another PC.

Hi @ponlork thank you for sharing update. 

How to Recover Data from FOUND.000 Folder - Best Three Solutions (systoolsgroup.com) says SysTools Hard Drive Recovery Software is the best solution. 

Please share an update on progress, so that other users derive benefit from your experience. Thank you. 

Well it somewhat worked. Instead of copying the folder to the root, what I did was changed the folder options to show hidden files and uncheck the Hide system files thing. Then I went inside the found.000 folder, right-click and cut the dir0000.chk folder to the main directory and renamed it Windows. The folder size came out to be 27gb.

This time instead of just being a black screen, it showed the Windows logo and I can go to the login screen.

However when I log in it would just show a Black screen but it now has a mouse pointer.

I followed a video on youtube that suggest pressing Ctrl alt delete to bring up the task manager, and to type in regedit at the new task. However when I did that it says Windows cannot find 'regedit'. I checked in the windows folder and noticed that regedit is missing.

The good news is I am able to the access the recovery options now to reset my PC and keep my files. However I was hoping I could hold out on doing that for a little while longer. And I'm thinking if I should search for the regedit file with getdataback or just reset the laptop and keep my files.

I've never reset my laptop before and I'm a little nervous that it'll delete something I didn't want it to. Just to make sure, would it keep My Documents files? Or what about the files I have saved on the desktop. I have a bunch of files and folders, will it keep that too?

Yeah I disconnected the M.2 SSD temporary for now. I'm currently cloning the Sata drive with Clonezilla before I reset just incase something goes wrong. I also have a lot of Virtualbox drives that I'm concerned about. I have a feeling that it's going to delete those. Not too long ago I uninstalled this program called Retroarch and it deleted all the contents inside the retroarch folder including 60gb worth of games inside the folder. So I assume if it's going to uninstall Virtualbox then it might delete the Virtual Disks as well. So I'm going to look into backing that up too.

I'll update y'all when everything is reseted. I have a theory that it may have been due to me updating the Bios in SupportAssist a few days ago. I wasn't aware of this program and I opened it up and noticed all these critical updates including a Bios update. Maybe that might have had something to do with it messing up initially.

Hi @ponlork thank you for sharing update. 

Guess that you are recovering the SATA HDD's O(C:) boot drive and have removed the NVMe M.2 SSD's O(C:) boot drive so that the system does not get confused. Hopefully the M.2 Data drive is installed. 

The SATA HDD's Reset this PC and Keep my files, will remove applications and settings, but keeps your personal files stored in user account. You are right to question if this also includes your user desktop files. Please take this opportunity to copy all your personal files and save to your Data drive. 

Then decide which recovery option satisfies your requirement, safe in the knowledge that all your personal files have been saved to the Data drive. 

Please share an update on progress, so that other users derive benefit from your experience. Thank you. 

Hi @ponlork thank you for sharing update. 

Never use Dell SupportAssist to install BIOS update over the internet, that is just asking for trouble and can brick the Alienware 15 R3. 

Make sure that battery is fully charged, and ac adapter is plugged into laptop, and check if F2 BIOS menu includes BIOS protection setting. 

Always manually download the BIOS update file and verify the checksum value to ensure the integrity of your download. If download is good, Run as administrator to install, the keyboard function will be disabled during install and the system will restart many times. 

Thanks for the tip, I'll update the BIOS manually after I get everything set up. So I finally finished resetting the laptop, however I noticed all the custom folders in my C Drive were gone:

But then I changed the folder options to show Hidden folders and files and it showed the folders

this might be something that Dell should consider changing because I imagine there's a lot of customers who may freak out at first, or they may not realize that their storage space is being eaten up by folders from their previous windows that are now Hidden.

I was wondering should I simply make these folders visible by unchecking the Hidden option in the folder properties? It isn't marked for deletion or anything is it? though I don't think Microsoft have such a feature

Hi @ponlork thank you for sharing update. 

Does the clone you created that captured personal files and these hidden files on the original HDD get you back to where you were before this problem started? Or is there more work to recover files, applications, etc.? 

well I cloned the sata HDD (damaged windows) temporary using a program called Acronis just in case something went wrong during the reset. It saved it as a .tib file. 

After the reset I noticed that the wifi adapter is having issues. I tried to uninstall and troubleshoot it but I can't get wifi working. I used a ethernet to update everything. However I feeling like resetting it again and deleting everything. The boot process is slow as well. It's faster than before but it's not as fast as when I had a fresh install. 

My initial problem was my Windows folder being wiped and I just saw a black screen. I used chkdsk and found the Windows folder in the found.000 folder and moved it to the root directory. I wasn't able to log in but I could access the Recovery options which let me reset the Windows.

Now I'm just backing up all the main folders from the C directory to my external hard drive, then I'm going to wipe it clean by installing Windows 10 from a bootable USB. While my M.2 ssd hard drive, I am going to clone a copy of my Alienware hdd that I backed up in 2018 to use as my main OS, while keeping a secondary Windows 10 on the sata hdd.

it probably isn't a good idea to have two instances Windows 10 installed on two separate Hdds to dual boot with but I experiment with a lot of programs and apps that might slow my windows down so I'm going to try and keep the M.2 HDD clear from that stuff as much as possible. Until it starts going slow then I'll probably start being less mindful of clutter but for now, I rather keep them separate 

Hi @ponlork thank you for sharing update. 

With all of the changes, the operating system files on the SATA HDD are probably struggling to interface with one another and delaying the boot process. Please run Check Disk to find and automatically fix any file problems on the SATA HDD OS(C:) boot drive. Check Disk may open and say there are no problems to fix, but run it anyway. Thank you. 

I would try but I wouldn’t you get what I mean? What if it messed it up again? Or it actually works and nothing is wrong with it? But I would just try at least?

Well at the moment I'm just experimenting so I'm not too worried about it not booting again. I think I finally got it how I wanted. Previously I would detach the other hard drive when installing Windows 10, this time I kept both hdd's attached and I installed Windows 10 to M.2 SSD drive and to my surprise, it show a Dual Boot option in the beginning:

I read somewhere that this isn't possible with two separate hard drives and it only work with Partitioned drives but it worked here. I also tried EasyBCD but it said because my system uses EFI that it doesn't work.

I'll give this a try for a bit to see if it is stable. Before I would enter the boot options by pressing F12 and manually selecting the hard drive. So maybe that's what cause the collision when I shut down and restart

Here's a screenshot of the Disk Management and msconfig in both hdds.

The M.2 SSD (Volume 6)

The Sata HDD (volume 3)

As for Virtual Machines, i've used Virtualbox before for Linux and older Windows but i dont really like having to mount a USB device in or installing guest additions and sharing folders so I can transfer files from my other hdds. 

There's probably ways to make it more seamless but it seems to require a lot of work. I also don't really like the dynamically allocated hard disks where it expands, and if you delete data then that data won't reduce the capacity. And i dont really like the idea of having a virtual disk with a fixed filesize sitting on my hdd eating up space.

I do use virtual machines when I have to though. It just doesn't really feel authentic to me. like reactos work good in virtualbox but on real hardware it's atrocious. I also remember being annoyed by the screen resolution not behaving how i want it to.