Laptop resetting after being left on

[MoAnn88]

I bought my laptop August of 2018 for school and just recently it's started to lose all my documents and anything I had on it. It seems like it started happening after I logged into a WiFi system at a hotel. I left it on twice and both times when I restart it, it's back to manufacturer settings and all my stuff is gone. I have some stuff saved with OneDrive but it's quite annoying when I have to recover everything every time I turn it back on. Anyone else have this issue?

[WAWood]

@MoAnn88 

You said you used Hotel WiFi systems -- and in most, if not all cases, those are unsecure -- opening you up to infection my malware agents, and the problems you are reporting are typical of such agents.

Here's a thread from Norton about the risks of open WiFi:  https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-wifi-why-hackers-love-public-wifi.html

My suggestion, if you are going to persist in using open WiFi systems, is to investigate the use of VPN products.

[MoAnn88]

Thank you for the information. Do you have a suggestion on how to fix the issues?

[WAWood]

@MoAnn88 

From your post, it sounded like you recovered everything and want to prevent having to do that over and over.

The solution, as best I can tell, is to use a VPN when connected to open WiFi systems.

[MoAnn88]

I apologize for the confusion, let me rephrase. I did not recover my windows back to my original user settings. It was set back to manufacturer settings and I started again from scratch with my documents and photos that were saved from my OneDrive. I have done this twice now because it keeps resetting back to manufacturer settings and wiping my computer out. Today, I tried to restart in safe mode and everything was back to normal and I have my original settings back, so NOW I have recovered everything. Does that mean I am no longer at risk at this time or do I need to purchase additional protection from malware or is my McAfee anti-spyware and anti-virus sufficient protection? I will just refrain from using my computer on open networks from this point on.