Eclipse Indigo completely reset itself -- projects and settings gone

Question

Launched Eclipse Indigo on Windows XP SP3 this morning and noticed it was taking an unusually long time; I have startup plug-ins disabled and my startup time is usually a matter of seconds.

Finally, Eclipse opened with the Welcome screen. I found that a bit odd, considering my default perspective is the Workbench. So I clicked Workbench and the Package Explorer was empty -- all my projects were gone. Also, all of my carefully tuned preferences had been reset.

Fortunately my project files are still intact and I can import them.

I had this happen before on a Mac with Galileo and thought it was just a fluke, but now it's twice that Eclipse has become self-aware.

I had been using Indigo regularly for months and changed nothing in the preferences or .ini during my last session. I do not use an AV and my computer is free of malware.

This is dangerous behavior for a commercial-grade IDE -- any ideas on why this could be happening and what could be done to prevent it in the future?

Answer 1

This happend to me when i accidentally moved the location of my eclipse workspace, if you cleaned up/ resorted files on your computer and moved the eclipse workspace to another directory location the IDE will appear to reset when opened.

Click File -> switch workspace, then find the location of the workspace and your projects will be restored

Answer 2

My Eclipse Indigo regularly resets itself (1-2 times a week). So I always have a backup of .metadata folder and restore it every time.

I tried to switch workspace but Eclipse tells: "An error occured".