I'm trying to help out with my child's school computers. They recently set up new Windows 7 (pro?) machines. Initially they were set up in a workgroup. Each machine had a local admin account for the teacher, and the students used the guest account. Students created folders on the desktop and stored their documents in them. As expected these folders were in c:\Users\Guest\Desktop. After a couple of months, they set up a Server 2003 domain and joined the computers to the domain. Now they can't find the users's files, even if they sign in using the local guest account. The path listed above is now empty. I cannot find the files using the Windows search tool. I read another post suggesting a CMD search using dir /s, which I have not tried yet. Does anyone know where the files are? Are they still on the system but hidden, or were they deleted? If deleted, can I use a file recovery program to retrieve them? Thanks. Tom

Hi, When the computers joined the 2003 AD server, group policy may have disabled the guest accounts. On each computer log in as administrator, try this in search bar type Computer Management hit the enter key. Expand Local Users and Groups - Users - Guest - untick account disabled. Now restart and see if you can access the guest account . Copy folders (ie. My Docs, Desktop, Favorites.) and save to a temp folder on C:\. On the Server create an account to use instead of the Guest account. Then let the children use that account and add paste the folders saved earlier to the new user account folder. Log in as Admin, disable the Guest account.Please bear in mind, that my answer is based on the details given in your post. The more I get the better the answer, Slan go foill, Paul

Hi, Members of this group have a temporary profile created at log on, and when the member logs off, the profile is deleted. The Guest account (which is disabled by default) When the computers joined the 2003 AD server, group policy may have disabled the guest accounts. On each computer log in as administrator, try this in search bar type Computer Management hit the enter key. Expand Local Users and Groups - Users - Guest - untick account disabled. Now restart and in search bar type User Accounts - Manage another Account - turn on the guest account. See if you can access the guest account . Copy folders if they are any (ie. My Docs, Desktop, Favorites.) and save to C:\ temp folder On the Server create an account to use instead of the Guest account. Then let the children use that account and paste the folders, saved earlier to the new user account folder. Log in as Admin, disable the Guest account. Please bear in mind, that my answer is based on the details given in your post. The more I get the better the answer, Slan go foill, Paul

You may try some third party data recovery programs to get the files back.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

It took me a few days to find the time to get back to the lab. Sorry about the delay. Thank you for the suggestions. I followed your instructions, adapting to the Windows 7 Dialog boxes as needed, but found that the guest account was NOT disabled. I assumed that I should use a local admin user since I was trying to change local accounts. Would a domain user have better results? Even before trying your steps, I was able to sign in as a local guest by entering the user as pc1\guest however, there was nothing to see. I suspect that when the domain created the first guest temporary profile that it broke the links from the local guest profile to the files in question. I guess I'm down to the file recovery idea suggested below. I will try to look for something that runs from a USB drive so that I don't have to install anything on the local c drive. Thank you for your time and suggestions, Tom

Hi Tom, You could use http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/ it boots to Ram not to the harddisk. Unzip and Burn the .iso to cd, It has recovery software that might help in getting deleted user files. Please bear in mind, that my answer is based on the details given in your post. The more I get the better the answer, Slan go foill, Paul

Paul, I tried Recuva Portable from Piriform and did find a fair amount of recoverable files. None of them were from the proper path, but there were some listed as c:\?\. I thought the files might be in there, but none of the names matched. I'm going to call this a lost cause. There's almost 30 PCs and none of the ones I checked had the files I needed. I can't see spending the time to go through all of them for a few files. I'll never understand why they thought the guest account was a good idea. At least we're on to domain accounts and things will be better protected. Thanks for your advice. I consider this thread complete. Tom