Periodic Crash

[adamaudi]

Once every couple of weeks it freezes up while I'm typing in the search bar. I've tried force closing and simply rebooting and both result in the same issue --- all of my configuration is lost. The settings folder is not only empty it's missing. What would cause a crash to delete all the settings and how can I avoid it? What should I monitor next time it occurs so I can figure out what's causing this? It's occurred over the last few versions.