Aargh.

Edited to add:

Thank you, Tim of the TOS Homeschool Crew, for helping us fix this problem! (His suggestion: restart the computer, press F8 before Windows boots, and select “Last known good configuration”–it worked!)

Whew.

Turned on the computer this morning and my desktop is toast. My files are still there, somewhere, some layers down (at least they are for the moment), but programs are gone and I can’t access my files under “My Documents” — “My Documents” appears to be empty. Firefox appears to have forgotten all my bookmarks and passwords. Who knows what else is missing that was there yesterday?

My pictures and downloaded files are gone, or somewhere else, or the links to them have been moved, or something.

I hate playing “hide and seek” with my computer.

Want to read something scary? Do an Internet search on “Windows Automatic Update deleted all my files”. One guy, a lawyer, was able to access his files the same way I’m able to find mine at the moment, through a kind of “back door”, but after restarting his computer again, his files became completely inaccessible, or un-openable, something like that.

We just got Carbonite yesterday, but does it have the good files and links? Did it back up programs, too, or just data? Is my desktop there, somewhere, waiting to be restored? (Or not?) I’m too new to the program to know exactly what it does.

It appears this has been happening for some years, and that Microsoft is ignoring the problem… at least, I don’t see anything posted from Microsoft that addresses how to get my computer back. Lots of advice from other people, some of which sounds pretty… um, intimidating.

And if their automatic Windows updates have been screwing up people’s computers since at least 2008 (or so I’ve been reading, and perhaps they go back further even), THEN WHY DO THEY KEEP ON DOING THEM??????

Pardon me for yelling. I’m really frustrated right now.