The other day when I rebooted my machine, I was surprised to see a fresh desktop, as though it was the result of a new Windows 7 installation. But as I browsed through the drives, the data was intact. It was puzzling me as to why it could have happened as I was so sure about my system could not have got infected.

Then I browsed through the forums for any possible solution. I could find a solution which worked for me. Though the problem looks serious, the solution is just quite simple.

I just want to compile bits and pieces of information on the web into one blog post, so that it may help anyone with a similar problem.

Here are few simple steps that you need to follow,
1. Go to Run prompt and type ‘regedit’ to enter windows registry.
2. Go to this key, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
3. You would find a profile with ‘.bak’ appended to its name. And its corresponding original profile.
4. Delete the profile with the duplicate name and rename the <profilename>.bak file back to its actual name.
5. Reboot your system.

This solution worked for me. Hope it does for you.