My G5 reverted to factory settings on its own!

In the middle of a typical day Mail got locked up... I quit it, then quit all other apps and restarted. Now my G5 restored itself to the original factory settings and my mail is nowhere to be found, it wants me to set up all my mail accounts again. All of my other applications are still installed, but none have a memory that they were ever used by my machine (Fetch which has also lost all of my shortcut settings), browsers (favorites are gone), Mail (completely empty), iTunes (completely emptied out 3,000 songs), address book (now empty), and software that I puirchased online and activated with an activation key now wants me to re-enter my activation key.
Is this a KEYCHAIN issue, or a hard drive problem? Please help!
thanks
Steve
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.9) Dual 1.8GHz

GigSalad:
It is bit late to ask, but do you have a backup of at least your data?
Have you done a simple Find File (Command + F while in Finder) and searched for any of the missing files?
Another option is to download and run What Size. It will scan your HDD and list everything by size. You can then examine the results searching for anything familiar or unfamiliar. Look especially in any Folders with names like Lost and Found, Recovered items, etc.
Good luck.
cornelius
Message was edited by: cornelius

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1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc that came with your computer, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
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Is there anything different about going directly from Apple TV 1.0 to Apple TV 3.0 that might have been fouled up when going from 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0? I wonder if the incremental upgrades left "baggage" that was somehow incompatible with each other.
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2. Remove ALL cables (for around 30 seconds)
3. Swap HDMI cables for component were possible.
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8. Re-enable autosyncing in itunes.
9. Manually resync your library if autosyncing hasn't already done so.
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