I did clean install on my friends computer. It was the only selection I could choose. Everything installed find. But a lot of his files where not in the windows.old desktop, documents, etc. For some reason the stuff we could find were in the public account and his user account is empty. Even right now. when open desktop folder in his new user account it is empty. The shortcuts from the stuff I reinstalled are in the new public account. What is going on here and is there anyway to find his old files?
it keeps user files, not public to my knowledge. Id guess they are toast now. I could be wrong, and if so someone will chime in below me for sure.
Your title says "Clean Install". Why would there be any files unless on a different data drive. You should of made a backup & run the installer from within windows if you wanted to upgrade & keep files...
In fact, things are so. If you did not cleaned the partition (not wiped and formatted) before installation, you were asked, whether to keep/maintain files and settings, or only files and folder or don't maintain nothing. Then you had to make your selection. If You selected the first, all Your files and folders will be on their places, as they had been before. If You selected the second, all Your files and folder are moved to Windows.old If You selected the third - there is nothing visible, but they can be "Undeleted" or "Recovered", if not still overwritten, but usually most of recovered files are damaged and cannot be used anymore. If You wiped partition, there is nothing to recover. But if You only reformatted, You can try to recover, because then all files are there, till they will be overwritten with newer ones.
Sounds like you didn't install correctly. To do a proper clean install is to boot from an installmedium and when done right you get the partitionmanager during initial setup, there you should have full controll and you should have deleted or reformatted the partitions on the system disk. You probably did start setup on a running windows or forgot to re-partition/format the system partitions. To do a RE-install you can do that by going to the settings and recovery menu and choose refresh with or without keeping userfiles.
No clean install always moves everything from User, Windows, program files and program directories to the windows.old directory and does not wipe anything on the HDD. But for some reason on his old and new installation his files are stored in the public user directory. We found and restored all his files in the end. I never seen that before, maybe because I only used Pro, Enterprise and Education. Maybe this something the Home version does?
Frankly I never installed an home. But everithing from Vista to 10 moves the files to windows.old (and if already present to windows.old.001 )
You had another choice, install from a boot flash or dvd without formatting the drive. Then you wouldn't have lost any files.