Someone Please Help???

I have no idea what I have done but I think I have done something pretty serious???

Switched PC on this morning and it did all it's normal boot up I got to the bit where I usually click on a wee picture and my name and it loads windows, I clicked on then pic and it said loading settings (all good so far) then it said settings could not be found I clicked ok (OK was the only option) then another window opened saying my settings could not be found and windows would be opened using temporary settings which would be lost when I shut down windows????

So windows opened with a desktop from many moons ago and no screensaver and none of the icons on my desktop. It also seems to have forgotten all my user names and passwords. and then when I went to My Pictures folder it is empty????? and when I search it says there are no pictures in c:\\temp\my pictures (or something similar??)

It is windows XP I use. Anyone any ideas PLEASEEEEEEE

Has it perhaps reverted back to a previous checkpoint ?

If so can you find one that was created more recently ?

I'm not even sure they are called checkpoints (i'm not that PC savvy) but that's what ours did once.

Thanks for the reply Phil, Itried to do a system restore (get me eh sounds like I know what I am doing - what a wonderful thing Google is!!) and the Stupid machine tells me that system restore has encountered an error in one or more drives and is unable to complete the task!! I was trying to restore itto yesterday when I had all my files and everything worked perfectly.

virus? did you download something just before?

Thanks Krusewalker, I didn't download anything I can think of, was looking at BBC and Dogsey last night and checked yahoo emails but didn't open any attachments and it was all fine then switched off PC and this morning it did that. I have anti virus and firewall and pc runs spy doctor everyday.

Just worried I have lost all my files.....