Greg writes, “I have followed all your tips, but when I upgraded from XP Pro to Vista all of my documents in My Documents folder are gone. Can I recover them or chalk one up to trusting Microsoft?”

Hi, Greg. Your documents should be in the Documents folder (it’s been renamed from “My Documents”). You can click Start, Documents to open it. As long as you did an upgrade and not a re-install, all your old documents are automatically copied to the new documents folder. If you did a custom install rather than an upgrade, the files will still be there, but they won’t be automatically migrated. Look in the following folder:

C:\Documents and Settings\username\username’s Documents\

If you don’t see them there, click Start, and then click Search. Search for one of your documents–it should pop up, and you can find the location.

If you did a custom install and you formatted your hard disk (this would only have happened if you ignored several warnings), you’ll need to restore your files from backup.

Good luck.