Intel iMac resetting itself?!!

[CraigDS]

Having turned my iMac off last night in the normal way (and everything being fine!) I turned it back on this morning to find my desktop cleared, a few programmes missing and all the settings in Mail gone. This is the second time this has happened in the last 6 months.

Any ideas what this could be? And any way for me to get all the stuff back?

Cheers.

 

[Muncher]

Perhaps there were some problems shutting down, so os x didn't save your desktop settings. Are you sure your desktop was actually cleared? Or is os x just not displaying anything? Open finder, on the left-hand side is a quick access bar with an option "desktop." Click on it. Is the folder empty? Even if it is, don't panic. Some files may be recoverable, but I would advise against saving anything new onto anywhere on your imac, or just generally using it until you either take it to an apple store where they can probably recover almost everything.