Origin uninstall deleted everything in Program folder

[Felderburg]

@Straatford87

My files were in C:\Users\USERNAME\Gaming. I have now reinstalled Origin under C:\Users\B117\Gaming\Origin, but this is not something I should have had to do manually, nor would I expect the Origin uninstaller to delete anything other than the Origin files if it did happen to be in an open folder.

[Straatford87 · Accepted solution]

[THIS POST HAS BEEN MARKED AS A SOLUTION TO INCREASE ITS VISIBILITY]

@Rabaal @Felderburg @AimlessEquation7 @WastedBreider

[post has been edited to clarify the current situation]

First, I would like to apologize to all of you that I initially misjudged this situation. I tagged you in this post to notify you that we are currently investigating how to keep a faulty install and uninstall from happening.

Once again, I'm really sorry that we didn't pick up on this earlier. I therefore want to thank all of you for reaching out to us with your feedback. I will update this thread once more information is available.

Current step to avoid this problem:

• Enable Beta versions for Origin during installation, or via Origin -> Application Settings -> Participate in Origin client betas if Origin is already installed.
• Before uninstalling Origin via the control panel, first verify that Origin is installed in its own sub folder; e.g. C:\Games\Origin instead of C:\Games\.
• If Origin is not installed in its own sub folder, the don't uninstall via the control panel, but instead via a manual uninstall.

[Rudiasd]

Same problem here. Lost almost all of my programs and many files from my computer. Is there any way to get those files back? There was old pictures and stuff.. what the origin, is this what we pay for? 

[fnkerman]

This removed everything. 10+ years of music stuff I made since Orgin was in the same parent folder. Is there a way to revert this?

[Rabaal]

@EA_Tom wrote:

[THIS POST HAS BEEN MARKED AS A SOLUTION TO INCREASE ITS VISIBILITY]

• Before uninstalling Origin via the control panel, first verify that Origin is installed in its own sub folder; e.g. C:\Games\Origin instead of C:\Games\.
• If Origin is not installed in its own sub folder, the don't uninstall via the control panel, but instead via a manual uninstall.

The only problem is, nobody is going to know about this solution until they run into the issue themselves and google it. By that time, it's already too late, the damage is done. This isn't really much of a fix in the mean time. Maybe release an informative email or splash screen / alert on origin to inform users to this issue until it is resolved.

@fnkerman wrote:

This removed everything. 10+ years of music stuff I made since Orgin was in the same parent folder. Is there a way to revert this?

You could try this article, but don't hold your breath. It's not very likely to work. [Link removed - Admin.]

[svenolio]

Just had the same problem, WHAT THE HELL! How is this acceptable??? It just deleted over 500gb of data that had noting to do with origin how can that be NORMAL for installer/uninstallers,. Clearly it is not, since I never had this problem before, while I installed something wrongly in that folder many times before, where the uninstall function then just deleted files and folders that were part of that software. This is just horrible and unacceptable! Luckily for me it were mostly game files since it was my games folder, but damn this is just crazy. go fix your bad installers this should not be NORMAL behavior at all.

[Straatford87]

@svenolio

Hi,

I'm sorry to hear that you're files have been deleted in this manner.

I'm going to check up on this for you - could you please let me know the exact location of where the Origin folder was installed? For example, C:\Origin, instead of C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin?

Once again, I'm really sorry that this happened to you.

[svenolio]

Sorry for the rage earlier, cooled down a bit and currently trying with Recuva to restore as much as I can (tip for others with the problem).

Thanks for the quick reply and putting in effort, hopefully it can be resolved in the future.

As per your question, my problem came while installing a game through origin, not while installing origin itself.

I was installing a game (Battlefield 3) trough origin and manually stated it should go to my game folder D:/Games thinking it would automatically create a sub-folder for the actual installation files, however it didn't and I didn't double check the full install path (my bad on this part), so it installed straight into the games folder. Since I had this type of problem before with other software/games, I though let's uninstall and reinstall again, creating the sub-folder myself. So I uninstalled the game through origin, then during uninstall apparently it started deleting the complete games folder and contents, instead of just the related installation files.

[Straatford87]

@svenolio

Don't worry about raging - perfectly understandable under the circumstances. Instead, big thanks to you for taking the time to reach out to us and adding the additional information.

I'll make sure this gets looked at so we can prevent future instances from occurring. I hope that in the meantime you will be able to recover your files with Recuva, as we have no means of restoring them via Origin.

If you do have any further questions, please let me know.

[Megapally420]

Just in case people wanna know this still happening in 2020