I have a windows XP with four users on the computer.

I clicked my profile this morning only to find that all my files on my account were gone! All the cookies, all my information, everything just looked like it had been restarted.

Strangely enough, all the programs I have downloaded were still there. The other three accounts, moreover, have not been touched -- they look the exact same and they still have all their files.

Do you have any idea what happened? Did someone hack my account? More importantly, is there any way to retrieve these files?

Thank you so, so much for your help. I am really really stressed out about this because I have had this computer for 5 years now and have never backed anything up (now I see the utter stupidity in that), and I have so many files that are really important that are now just gone!

Please help, and thank you so much in advance for your time!
I tried system restore, but it gives me an error that framedyn.dll was not found. Does system restore even restore old files?
They are really not on the computer -- it's not like they were deleted unintentionally. When I turned on the computer, all my settings had reset (for example, my background picture reverted back to the one it came from straight from the factory) and all of my saved passwords, etc, no longer existed. With this vanished all of my documents and pictures.

it sounds like sum strange type of virus. At least it did not affect other users or programs. Back up your hard drive regularly.

Easy. Just restore them from your back-ups. What you say? No back-ups.

You just learned a valuable lesson, back-up, back-up, back-up, to another media...CD, DVD, external hard drive, a web-based on-line 'pay-for' service like Carbonite:
http://carbonite.com/

Seriously, did you really expect that a single machine could save all your important documents and other stuff...forever?
Computers break...software get corrupted...hard drives fail. Other people hold grudges and delete files.

Back-up! Back-up! Back-up!

Sorry for the "tough-love" dude.

Hope everything is recoverable!

Good luck.

no system restore only restores settings and the registry ... if u cant find them on the admin account using windows search then try a recovery application ..

System Restore does not restore your deleted files especially if it is found in your documents...

Suggestion 1:
Try to explore it using Windows Explorer.
Folder Option: Show All Files / Hidden Files

Suggestion 2:
If it was an intentional or someone had deleted it... No remedy for it but you can uses Tune Up Utilities to recover deleted files on your recycle bin but it will show you the status of that file if it is in good (can be use) or bad (corrupt) condition...

Hope it helps you...

I think your user profile is recreated. If you can find your old profile in the C:\Documents and Settings\'User Name', then you could access your old user profile. You need to restart your computer, log in as another admin user and then copy your old user profile directory into the new user profile and make sure your hidden files are enabled, so that you can copy everything.