oh boy

[XWrench3]

my wife just came to me with her laptop. she somehow deleted a program unintentionally (lenovo photo master along with many photos) from the computer that she did not intend to. she does not know if she deleted it, uninstalled it, or ??? she was trying to reset her default browser after following a link that our daughter sent her, to watch a video clip. i checked to see if the program was still listed in control panel-programs, but it is gone. the good news is she has not restarted the computer, so i hope whatever she did can be reversed. on a side note to this, i found an icon on the desktop that was labeled "removed apps" that has the "e" of the edge browser as an icon. this however is from may 10, not today. i have told her repeatedly NOT to mess with things, if there is a problem, to come and see me. but i can not get to upset, she is not working on all cylinders, as she had a small stroke several years ago. i an half tempted to do the one button restore thing, but one thing i do know is if i do not know the answer for sure, to come here and ask first. its a lot easier than trying to fix things after the fact. so can this be repaired fairly easily, or do i need to take this to a shop?

 

[XWrench3]

p.s. i just looked to see what she installed that started the mess to begin with. there are 2 new programs installed. the first is named :Stack Player", and the second is "PPC software.

 

[carnageX]

Do you have any restore / software discs that come with the extra software? Have you tried looking on Lenovo's site to see if you can re-download the software and re-install it?

 

[XWrench3]

i have not yet. i hope we can recover the data, because of the photos she lost. i have the exact same computer, so there may be a possibility of copying the program from mine to put into hers as well if all else fails. but the photos really are the important thing here. i will go check about re-downloading the program from lenovo.

 

[carnageX]

Ah I missed that part about the lost photos.

Do you know where the photos are supposed to be stored? Can you use the software on your computer, save an image, and see where it saves them to, to see if you can check on her system for a similar folder location?

In the meantime, don't save anything on her system in case file recovery is indeed necessary.

 

[XWrench3]

well, there is a program that i can download (lenovo photo master) for windows 10 64 bit that names roughly 50 models, but not our exact model. they list G50-45, G50-80, and several other "close" model numbers. but not our exact one. it will most likely work though. as i have found quite a bit of inaccuracies in their specs on low end versions. also, these computers originally came with windows 8.1 and were updated to windows 10. so that might be a reason this exact model is not listed there.

 

[zaka100]

Can't you just use a file restorer like recuva?

 

[carnageX]

Can't you just use a file restorer like recuva?

We don't know if the files indeed need recovered yet - they could just be in a weird directory . That's why I told OP to try it on his system first to see where the files save to by default.

 

[XWrench3]

Do you know where the photos are supposed to be stored? Can you use the software on your computer, save an image, and see where it saves them to, to see if you can check on her system for a similar folder location?

i will have to wait for her to get back from the store to see how she saves photos. i don't know if she imports and saves them, or copy and paste like i do.

 

[XWrench3]

OK ,she is home, i did find all of her photos in C/this pc/photos . so it will just be a matter of downloading the Lenovo file, installing it, and copy paste all those photos. hopefully i can do them as a batch. and uninstalling the 2 programs she downloaded and installed today (i will do that first), then make sure all of her defaults are where they are supposed to be. last, do a couple of scans to make sure she did not pick up some kind of malware. actually, i think i will do the scans after i remove the two programs. no point in opening any files until i know there isn't a bug attached to one of them. the "ppc" program was Pro PC Cleaner. i used to use stuff like that years ago. but i am pretty sure now that at least most of them do more harm than good. thanks for the help! i just don't do enough of this kind of thing for my mind to stay sharp.