Address Book- blank and Mail app preferences- gone! (and iphoto and firefox

Hello,
Suddenly, my address book is blank. After starting the computer this morning, the doc came up in its basic original form. Mail app has lost its preferences (when it opens it says "You have no email accounts configured to use Mail..."). Iphoto has also lost all the preferences. The pictures and are there in the computer but they don't appear in iphoto; further, firefox also seems to have lost its preferences.
I have no idea what to do....
Any help out there?!
Thanks
Omar

Thank you for the replies.
It does appear that my contacts are in the metadata folder.
I deleted the AddressBook-v22.abcddb file and opened Address Book but it was still blank and I still could not add my contacts back. I noticed that the file did rebuild itself. I restarted and still nothing changed.
There is a second file, AddressBook-v22~.abcddb, I deleted that as well and it did not rebuild itself and had no effect.
I did make a copy of the complete folder. Any other suggestions or even just insights will win my undying loyalty. I believe this is the first awkward problem I've had with my Mac and I am really uncomfortable not knowing what is going on.
I can only think of a few things I've done since I last checked Address Book, but I don't see how it would create this problem
- Deleted my windows partition through bootcamp
- ran disk permissions for the first time
- unintentionally had my contacts placed on my ipod (I have no need for them there and it really wasn't what I was trying to do)
I don't think there was anything else. Oh, yes - I purged my computer of all hidden google related files. I had already done this before but it turned out there were more more more. Geez, if a google related hidden files broke my Address Book - there are larger problems at hand than my contacts. (I did Not have my contacts synced with a google account or do I do any syncing with any mobile devices at all)
Also, I do not have any AV software.
Thanks again.

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