system32 missing, Completely bare desktop

So, this morning, I boot up my computer and find a black desktop with no icons on, and I get that error:

C:\Windows\system32\config\systemprofile\Desktop refers to a location that is unavailable. It could be on a hard drive on this computer, or on a network. Check to make sure that the disk is properly inserted, or that you are connected to the Internet or your network, and then try again. If it still cannot be located, the information might have been moved to a different location.

I do some snooping around, and I find that system32 indeed doesn't exist, but System32 does. However, the Desktop file or folder doesn't exist. I can access all my old files. They're still in the User folder, but everything profile related seems to be inaccessible.

Also, all the fonts seem to be using the old fonts, not the new Windows 7 fonts. And there seems to be an old version of System32 from the Old Versions tab, but the restore option is disabled. Somehow I'm trying to get it copied now. It's about 1.5GB.

Any idea what I should do?

EDIT: In this case, it seemed like a corrupted account. I'll outline what I did below.

Solution 1:

Right. So by the recommendation of my local IT guy, I found out it was a corrupted account, and did the following:

1. Created two new accounts. One of them, I was going to eventually migrate into.
2. Log into the account that I'm NOT going to migrate into.
3. Go to Folder options to see all hidden files and OS files.
4. Copy stuff over from the old account to the new account EXCEPT the ntuser*** stuff.
5. Log on to the other account. Do stuff.

Apparently, that was the easiest way of doing stuff with the stuff I had on the spot.

If I was doing this proper, I should have had reinstalled the whole thing, but I really wasn't in the position to do that, as I needed the lappy in a hurry.

Hope this helps someone!

Solution 2:

I faced the same issue. Nothing to worry. Just boot into safe mode(in case of win 8/8.1 press and hold shift and perform a restart. You will be booted into advanced menu select troubleshoot in submenu select adavced start option and select restart after restart press 5, you will be booted into safemode) there your computer will back to previous good config and perform normal restart. Everything works fine thereafter.

Above process helped me. Hope it will also help for u guys.