Photos, Music, Documents Disappeared

Hey all,

My friend came to me needing help, and I don't know what to do. He's running 10.4.11 on a MacBook. Today he went to load his photos online and they were gone, out of nowhere. He restarted the computer hoping that would remedy the problem, and when it logged back on much of the hard drive was wiped clean. He has none of his photos, none of his music in iTunes, and none of his documents. However, he still has his movies and downloaded applications. He tried loading iChat as well, and it was as if he was loading it for the first time. Please help me! He has his music on his iPod so I can transfer that back, but all of his photos and college papers are gone. Does anyone have any ideas on what may have happened? I've never heard of anything like this. Thanks for any help.

Best,
Taylor

Yep, he changed his user name.

Leaving the office now, maybe someone will get you pointed to the Apple kb articles on how to get it back where it was before I get home.

Mac OS X 10.3, 10.4 or later: Return to default desktop, apparent "loss" of home directory

Mac OS X: How to change user short name or home directory name

That is also the first thing that I would look into. I bet he renamed his account.

This should help if that is what he did.

Recover from renaming your Home folder

Knew someone would have ya covered before I could get home.