My iBook just partied itself off into a hole of doom

Question

so i was on adium, when i started noticing that the dock icon wasn't as it should be according to my status. then, i realized that all my logs were gone. after further investigation, i started realizing that everything was starting to disappear. i thought maybe restarting the iBook would help. --it didn't. it just made everything disappear. i'm starting to re-set-up all my apps. like Mail and such but there aren't as many icons (as before) in my finder when i click on it in the dock and my word documents were nowhere to be found when i tried to attatch them in an e-mail. any ideas on finding all my stuff would be greatly appreciated!
iBook G4 14"   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  

Answer 1

Open the /Users/ folder and look for the item inside which contains your account's files. If you find it, you have three options:
1. Follow the instructions in the article linked to above.
2. Drag files and folders from it to the folder which currently has the house icon. This option cannot be used to overwrite preference files currently in use, so the Dock items and some other settings will need to be corrected by hand.
3. Open the NetInfo Manager in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder, click the padlock, and change the instance of the old short name to the new one in your user's home property. Don't delete or alter any other accounts, groups, or properties, including your account's name property; the name property is changeable, but requires changing the membership of the admin group as well.
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