all my Control Center items are in Lost and Found!
 

I forgot what I was looking for in the Control Center anyway, but I was startled to find that every single item available in its index has disappeared. Later, I accidentally found them: everything I can remember seeing there is apparently in Lost and Found, which I passed while looking for something else in the K menu. How can I put the icons(wrong word?) back in the Control Center? Of less interest to me, what could have caused this?

I opened / in Konqueror, hoping to find the items in /lost + found and drag them into the control cenmter, but it was empty...

Never mind...I solved my own problem. I still have no idea why it happened; but anyone who has their KDE Control Center modules disappear and pop up in the K menu's Lost and Found, for no apparent reason, should try solving it by upgrading the control center using Synaptic Package Manager, as I just did.

It's a bug. Seems related to a certain package manager (apt?) keeping or caching certain packages like Kcontrol and KDE-libs at a lower than useful version.

Well, the bug appears to have just struck again, and is even less funny. My Konqueror has disappeared. I just reinstalled it with Synaptic. If things are going to randomly disappear, I'm glad my data is on a different partition.

While bad it's just menu items, not actual data.

Yes, but since I don't understand it, I can't be sure it won't spread.

Which version(s) of KDE & MEPIS are you using? -- your profile just says "3.x".

Was there any triggering event, such as an install of some (which?) package?

It's 3.4.3. And the KDE version...I'm not sure. It came with this MEPIS when I downloaded the ISO within the last few months.

This bug appeared after I upgraded Gaim and at least one optional package for Gaim which I don't recall.

And now everything on my desktop except the wallpaper disappeared. I had just logged out and back in (as root). However, I restarted the computer and logged in again, and the items reappeared, but my wallpaper disappeared! In the words of the Fourth Doctor, "Nothing like this has ever happened before."

Follow-up: I told you I should possibly worry about my data not being safe on the Linux partition. All my wallpaper files (not just the desktop wallpaper) just disappeared! The folder is empty.