So, I had a bunch of files vanish from my desktop, however, my hard-drive usage still is around the same. If these files were deleted I'd expect ~10gb of free space. Seeing as the drive is the same, they must be there.

Is there a program or something you can suggest so I can located these files?, Windows search comes up blank.

Cheers in Advance.

Schedule it for a scan next reboot time and see if they reappear? Or fire up a linux livecd and see if they are there (then, copy to another location).

What OS are you running? Make sure read only files are viewable, and print out the directory from command prompt.

I'm running windows vista.

It sounds like your old profile got corrupt or didn't load properly, and you got another default profile generated.

Look on your C:\ drive under the USERS folder.
You'll see your username there.

If you see 2 of your user name, then your files will be in the DESKTOP folder of the older profile. Just copy/move them over to your new desktop. Or - try a full reboot - that sometimes gets the right profile back on track.

try right clicking your desktop and go view, then show desktop items.

just a suggestion