Help - desktop/applications unavailable

[JPreston]

My main PC has spazzed out suddenly, I can't fully repair it unassisted...

It's running Vista 64. First sign of something wrong was that it took about 20mins to boot up, it successfuly(ish) restarted in safe mode and I was able to perform a system restore. Restarting normally took me to the login screen and I logged as usual (there is one admin account and one guest account). The impasse I've reached is that my desktop is clear, and hardly any applications work (VLC will open a file, but no browsers work at all, Office applications cannot open files and various other oddities).

If I right-click on the desktop and click refresh I get the error message "C:\windows\system32\config\systemprofile\Desktop refers to a location that is unavailable..." and I think that is the root of my problem. Naturally my C:\ drive is a partition on a fixed drive that has not (completely) failed and has not been removed. I can browse in explorer to my desktop and see my shortcuts and files there, but none can be used without producing that error message.

If there any way to restore my desktop, does it backup automatically? I'd just settle for a working windows installation (i.e. able to use applications and access my data, all my important files are on a separate partition) as I don't have time to reinstall windows at the moment as I'm flying off on hols shortly, not bothered about settings and the like. In fact I really need to be printing out tickets right now....any help greatly appreciated!!

(BTW I'm typing this on a separate netbook that's working fine, so I can download any diagnostic tools or fixes onto this and transfer by USB stick)

[Jay]

can you create a new account?

[Splash]

As Jay says - create a new account, then copy the contents of c:\users\%profilename% across.

[JPreston]

Cheers, that's done it