HELP, I've lost everything!!!!

[bcourtney]

I just got my first mac the other day and have been spending lots of time setting everything up. Tonight when my Firefox browser was chugging a bit, I realized I hadn't shut it down in two days (only in sleep mode). So, I thought I would restart it. It said something about 'garageband' needing to be force quit and I clicked OK. It then restarted but I lost all my settings. My wallpaper is gone, my internet settings are gone, my cool bar thingy at the bottom is not popping out at me anymore (that's very cool), and all my documents I had saved to my desktop are gone, actually I just checked and ALL the documents I had are gone, itunes, ical, address book, pics, EVERYTHING!!!! Does anybody know what happened or better yet, how I can fix it??? HELP, anyone??

[p0intblank]

Do you by any chance have FileVault turned on?

[Pistol Pete]

I just got my first mac the other day and have been spending lots of time setting everything up. Tonight when my Firefox browser was chugging a bit, I realized I hadn't shut it down in two days (only in sleep mode). So, I thought I would restart it. It said something about 'garageband' needing to be force quit and I clicked OK. It then restarted but I lost all my settings. My wallpaper is gone, my internet settings are gone, my cool bar thingy at the bottom is not popping out at me anymore (that's very cool), and all my documents I had saved to my desktop are gone, actually I just checked and ALL the documents I had are gone, itunes, ical, address book, pics, EVERYTHING!!!! Does anybody know what happened or better yet, how I can fix it??? HELP, anyone??

call applecare or bring it into the closest store is what i would say...

there is always apple online discussions...

[bcourtney]

Do you by any chance have FileVault turned on?
No, it's turned off. And I haven't turned it on cause I'm not sure about it. Any other suggestions?

[Lixivial]

Aside from p0intblank's apt suggestion about checking FileVault, also consider checking your Users folder -- /Users and see if there's a duplicate folder with your username.

It could be called anything from {username}.1 to {username}.old where {username} is the username you login as.

EDIT: Wow. I have a penchant for posting at the same time as other people, it seems. Wonderfully subtle, I suppose.

[bcourtney]

Aside from p0intblank's apt suggestion about checking FileVault, also consider checking your Users folder -- /Users and see if there's a duplicate folder with your username.

It could be called anything from {username}.1 to {username}.old where {username} is the username you login as.

EDIT: Wow. I have a penchant for posting at the same time as other people, it seems. Wonderfully subtle, I suppose.

I assume you mean the 'accounts' under system preferences. And no, there are two users.... mine, and a 'guest' one. I've tried both and nothing in either.

[Lixivial]

No, I didn't mean in the Accounts system preference. I meant on the hard drive -- if you open your Macintosh HD, or whatever you named it, you should see a folder called "Users"

That's where your profile settings, documents, love and happiness all reside. I'm asking if there's a duplicate one -- one that would coincide with your old profile before you rebooted -- lying in there. It's a stretch, to say the least.

Have you tried doing a spotlight search for these files?

[dmw007]

Were there any deleted files in the Trash?

[furious]

login to the guest account. see if all your items are in there.