Very strange problem with user accounts and W7...

Im posting this up hoping someone will be able to help me out with a strange problem that occured yesterday afternoon... Im hoping Iv overlooked a stupidly simply soloution here but anyway -

Right this computer has 3 profiles, all with W7. Everything has been great with zero probs.

Yesterday I logged off to let someone else log onto their account and for some reason the start menu wont pop up and all desktop icons are gone, and in fact any icon within explorer is missing.

Creating a new account will not reset some obscure option I might of triggered.

The new account will also have no icons and no start menu popping up.
The weird thing is, on my account and the third account everything i fine?

But this messed up account and any new account I create has these problems?

Also bringing up menus is really, really choppy in this account.
Everything is accessable, IE works fine etc its just the icons and start menu are gone?

I havent got a restore point (stupid I know) though I can just back up everything and re-format, Im just hoping someone might be able to clarify this problem.

Anyway any help would be greatly appreciated!

One thing I should mention is I was playing around in regedit, changing my default folder icons. They reset tho back to default after a day.

edit* I ran AVG full scan, have tried 'repair pc' from F8 options and memory diog. No probs at all detected.

I'm not familiar with this problem, I've never had it myself. You could always try a Windows 7 Repair install. Simply reinstall Windows 7 over again without formating and see if the problems are corrected. If this doesn't work you may have no choice but to start over with a fresh install.

Either way backup your data first, there is always a chance that things can go wrong in the install and leave you with no easy way to get your data.

Thanks for the reply - So if I re-install w7 over the current w7 I wont lose any software?

Il back up anyway and try this if so - thanks

Hi AidyD
Not a good idea, as you have no system restore points a startup repair may help > Startup Repair

Your software will not be lost.

This is an inplace install which is refered to as an upgrade when changing Windows Versions.

Nice - I tried the start up repair but no luck there, just did an install upgrade...

It worked!

Thank you very much for the advice, saved me formatting my HDD and potentially losing GBs of software.

Cheers