i know this is terrible but i'm not exactaly sure how this happened. i was doing something that effected my user profile. it was going through my desktop and i canceled it. then most of my shortcuts and folders i had on my desktop were gone. so i did a system restore and everything appeared to be fine. then (a couple days later. which is why i forgot how it happened) i opened a folder and every file inside was gone. it is the same for every folder on my desktop. i can still open the files from my recent files list in my programs. does anyone know how to recover these files? i lost a lot of things i was working on. *sigh. another kick in the "you had back ups? didn't you?" pants.