Vista - HELP! All photos in pictures folder disappeared, not in recycle bin

Earlier tonight I was organizing the photos in the pictures folder and all of a sudden they all disappeared without me doing anything. Also the folder icon reverted to the default yellow folder. When I click on the properties for the folder, it says the folder was created tonight whereas the other folders such as music, documents, etc say they were created when the computer was made. I have many of these pictures backed up but not all of them so I would really like to find out what exactly happened and and if it is possible to recover them. I checked the recycle bin and also did a search to find the missing files and folders and no such luck. As far as I know, I'm running Windows Vista Home Premium if that helps. Thanks!