2012 MBP running Venture randomly booted w/ new user onboarding flow - Applications still there, Files now missing

Hi Folks,

I recently upgraded my 2012 MBP to Ventura 13.6.3 and everything was working fine for about 2 weeks until something very strange happened yesterday.

I booted up my machine and when I went to logged into my user account it kicked off the set-up wizard like I was logging into my machine for the first time. When I got through that process I was greeted with a completely blank desktop. My heart sank because I had spend a few days downloading and installing applications and VSTs and authorizing them all.

I did a quick finder search and it turns out all the applications I had installed previously are still there and installed! Huge relief. When I opened the first one I was forced to authenticate it again as if it were the first time I was using the application. I had to do this for every application and VST (Still working through that actually). Not a huge deal but a little annoying.

This was not the case with any files I had on the machine. Can't find them w/ finder so I assume they are all gone...

Here is the weird part - I checked the storage on my hard drive (1TB SSD) it's half full! So all those files are still here... somewhere... Anyone have an idea how I can access these files?

submitted by /u/royhaven
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