i was working on a project, and i hit something erased all 2015 or later

? i as a fellow Secure Anywhere user that just automatically schedules the optimise to keep my system clean would find it very strange that it would erase your desktop. I haven't seen any setting in the optimise menu that would affect your desktop or the standard pictures location. Where did you store them exactly on your computer? 
 
I ( call it a wild guess ) think you accidentally used the secure erase function and that this erased part of your profile.
Now the point is ( and you can check this easily in the advanced settings under secure erase how the security slider's set ) how was your secure erase configured? Minimum setting or maximum. If it's minimum you stand a fair chance of recovering them as then the standard windows erase is used. If the setting's maximum then i think you can forget it as then the files are removed using a secure wipe method...
 
If you seriously plan to try and recover them PLEASE DO NOT USE  THAT HARD DRIVE for the time being and immediately look for a good data recovery tool. If you want i can dig up a few as i know a few people who do this as a full time profession.
Any time you write to this affected hard drive your chances for succesfully recovering the lost data diminishes significantly.
 
So it's up to you now to decide if you want to waste time trying to recover it. Feel free to nudge me here and i'll go after it.
 
 One thing i'd like to point out and these words come from a reputable data recovery experts is that as long as the hard drive does not have any media defects the chance for you to recover the files given the fact you use the right tools are fairly equal to when they do it using the same software. So don't panic & waste money on sending the disk to such a recovery guy but follow my advise about not writing to that disk till you tried to recover it and use an external device to store your recovered data on instead of writing it back to the original disk as that also reduces your chance of recovering the data
 

Hi porjotrucker
 
Welcome to the hear about you issues.
 
I am not quite clear as to this 'iwebroot  pop up' that you mention in you post. Would you be able to provide additional information on this as I have search for reference to this and can find none that makes any sense.
 
 
Regards, Baldrick