I've been a bit hard on Linden Lab in the past, but I'd like to address something that I started, but never finished. The topic would be that of my loss of inventory in April of 2007. Linden Lab recently announced that they are doing what they can to minimize this situation, and I believe them. Eloise touched upon the subject, but I'd like to elaborate on it more from my standpoint.

What happened to me was like hitting the lottery. If I recall correctly, only about nine of us lost our entire inventory and they worked diligently to fix it for us. At the time, I wanted to calm the hysteria that I caused, so I ceased to report on it, but a funny thing happened along the way. I somehow became a shoulder to cry on about lost inventory. There are apparently many types of inventory loss, from single items disappearing, to folders not showing up. Some of these errors don't have fixes yet, but there are certain steps that you can take to keep this kind of loss at a minimum.

For example, it should be common sense that the more inventory you have, the more likely you are for some of your items to go missing. Some people are under the impression that 15k items is the perfect limit. Once you go beyond that, your inventory groans as it tries to load all of the data. Go through your inventory and decide what you don't need. Either give it away to a friend, delete it, or give it away to a newbie.

As for solving the perceived inventory loss problem where the folders are showing, but empty, I was given some great advice from Mia Linden. Try clearing your cache and restarting. When you're at the login screen, choose to go to either Brilliant or Montara. Stand still there until your inventory loads all the way. I've had this trick work multiple times when I thought my inventory was lost again.

If that doesn't work, bug report your issue, in detail, and know that Kona is on your side. He is constantly working with the bug testing team to make SL a better place for us. I wasn't exactly the model resident to him when I lost my inventory, but he still handled the situation with finesse, and for that, I am grateful. Hang in there, Second Life!