Top 2 Ways to Recover Data from Crashed Windows 8.1/8

“Hi, my laptop running Windows 8 crashed over the weekend. After restarting the computer, my profile changed to a "clean" Windows 8 setting, i.e. no more apps and all my files on C: drive (pictures, music) are ABSENT. Files on D: (the other partition of my hard drive) are saved and sound. My question is this: where are the files on my C drive gone? Are they saved in an archive somewhere? How do I recover them? I'd be most grateful of any help!”
- CLCHAN (From Microsoft Community)

What will you do when your Windows 8.1/8 computer crushed? Factory restore can be a good idea, but you will lose all the files in your computer. How can we get data recovered from crashed Windows 8.1/8 computer or laptop? Here come the solutions.

• Part 1: How to Recover Data from Crashed Windows 8/8.1 When Computer Cannot Boot
• Part 2: How to Retrieve Data from Cashed Windows 8.1/8 When Computer Can Boot Normally

Part 1: Recover Data from Crashed Windows 8/8.1 When Computer Cannot Boot

In order to get back the data, users need to wake up the dead Windows 8.1/8 computer first. Data Recovery WinPE is the one who can instantly rescue data when computer won't boot. You can use this tool and ship it on a boot disk and allows you to boot from CD/DVD/USB flash drive to recover lost files if you can't get Windows to boot. Now, let's check what to do.

Step 1: You are required to download and install Data Recovery WinPE on a workable computer, then launch the program, then insert a blank CD/DVD/USB flash drive to the computer, and select in the program. Click "Burn" to preparing a bootable disk, during the process you will be required to click some "Ok" button to make sure of your decision;

Step 2: Insert this bootable disk into your corrupted Windows 8.1/8 computer and start it. Use the arrow keys to select Boot tab, and then select Boot Device Priority and press Enter;

Step 3: Choose "1st Drive" in the Boot Device Priority, and press "F10" in the keyboard to save the settings. And your computer will reboot and load the system;

Step 4: After loading, you will be able to see the interface below. Manually choose the selection of recovery to scan, preview and choose the target files to recover.

Part 2: How to Retrieve Data from Crashed Windows 8.1/8 When Computer Can Boot Normally

With a crashed computer, even users get it boot normally, there is a high risk that users would lose their files in the computer. Can we retrieve those lost data files from a crashed but normally booted Windows 8.1/8 computer? Any Data Recovery Pro, which is recommended by lots of users, will surely help to do so. Only a few steps, you can be able to recover data after Windows 8 crashes.

Step 1: Install Any Data Recovery to your computer, launch the program and choose the types of files you want to recover, and select the location to scan;

Step 2: Any Data Recovery will choose Quick Scan by default. The whole scan process will take about 1 minute, and you can also choose "Deep Scan" to scan more files. During this process you can choose to pause, preview and recover files to the path as you want.

After reading this article, you may probably have realized crashed Windows 8.1/8 data recovery, if you meet with same matter and want to recover data from corrupted Windows 10/7/XP computer, don't hesitate to have a look at this article.