My desktop is empty

I am having a meltdown something happened. I had 50 or so of full website contents to my desktop. At some point my worn out mouse accidentally grabbed a bunch of folders in my desktop and dropped them so i cancelled the transfer in mean time windows was doing some critical update. The next thing i see is my desktop is empty and the only last update was the critical install so i restore it to that and still empty. So now downloading files from server weeks of time but miss out on full graphics versions etc. I can't believe the day I have had today from bad to worse to to this. I have tried folder search file searches etc just wont find them, they are not in recycle bin just all missing. I am assuming somewhere on some temp folder as it takes some sort of time just to erase something. Just wondering do I try dissect find the files on hard drive anything is quicker than ftp and would like what i had saved in folders not just what uploaded to servers? It had to be today for me I have been so grilled today other commitments problems.