My 4 year old was on the computer & now my settings/programs are gone!

Question

My 4 year old was on my IMAC playing computer games. I left the room to do some things around the house & when I came back she had all my desk top items off of the desk top & all kinds of weird windows opened. What I was really concerned about was that NONE of my Iphoto pics & Itunes songs that were previously bought & downloaded were there anymore! In fact when I clicked on the Iphoto logo or Itunes logo to open them... I was directed to register & accept the user agreements again... just like the FIRST time I used them.
Does anyone have any idea if there is a way to retrieve the photos & songs on Itunes that were on there??? I have NO CLUE what she did. Actually my entire computer settings were set back to like my computer was new out of the box. My address book was empty, the bookmarks all gone, settings were changed. Luckily the isync was able to retrieve my Safari settings, bookmarks, & address book... but everything else is wiped out as far as I can tell. My husband is pretty upset about our complete Itunes library being completely wiped out!! Where the heck did everything go & what the heck did she click on to wipe everything out?? It's sad that my 4 year old is more computer savvy than I am!!
Anyway, I am just praying that some how there is a way to get this info back! I really want my pictures & my itunes back!!! If anyone has any ideas or suggestions I would greatly appreciate it!! Thanks in advance, Lori
PS yes I already checked the trash bin on the computer & the only things in there were a few items that I had deleted throughout the day

Answer 1

Ah! the joy of always having a cloned backup on an external firewire drive! Without wanting to labor the point, external drives are now cheap enough to make them the very first thing you should purchase after your Mac! This is ESPECIALLY true if you are going to let your 4 year old play with the computer!
Well what could have happened?
The likely possibilities are that your child has created another user account or, more likely, moved your "home" folder or other folders within it.
First thing to check, then , is inside Macintosh HD/Users to see if there is ANOTHER user account there.
If so, then that is probably where your stuff is.
If not, then you can probably be pretty sure that she has simply dragged your own stuff into different places, where things like iTunes and iPhoto wouldn't expect to find them. Spotlight is your friend. Think of one of those songs in iTunes and do a spotlight search for it. Chances are that you will find your missing stuff.
I'd be MUCH more worried if trash didn't contain some things that you had deleted earlier on. The only way your four year old could have deleted things without understanding Unix and using the Console or booting in single user mode would have been to have emptied the trash. If things you had put there earlier are still there, then your stuff will be "somewhere" on the drive. Again, think of any file which is missing, or even just a word within it, and try a spotlight search.
Don't be too surprised about the register and accept agreement messages. Maybe your obviously advanced child has used "Software Update" (from under the Apple menu). Alternatively, maybe you have the cmputer set to check for updates at regular intervals. If so, bear in mind that any newly "updated" software (and there have just been updates to iTunes etc) will ask you to accept the agreements the first time you use them .
One thing to think about is how much disk space has been used. If this too looks like it has gone back to very little, and was much higher before "playtime", then you have a major problem. If not, then your stuff is still there somewhere. Use spotlight to find it if a new user account hasn't been created.
If the worst comes to the worst, and dear child has really got rid of the stuff, then your last line of defence is "Data Rescue" - see http://www.prosoftengineering.com/products/data_rescue.php Yes, it will cost you $100US but it should be able to recover just about anything that has been deleted from your drive by any means available to your 4 year old, unless you have subsequently done major things to the drive.
Cheers
Rod