When I switched on this morning, my computer tod me it couldn't find my profiles and would set me up a temporary one. It seemed to download IE8 and when it finally started everything, documents, photos, had completely disappeared. Any suggestions as to how it happened and is there anything I can do about it?

Sorry mate, didn't see you.

your (old) profile has become corrupt. Try looking in C:\Documents and Settings\.. to see if your stuff is there – you might need admin privalages to see it. if you're on 7 or vista it might be c:\users