Windows Acting Up - Showing Hidden Folders, Require Program Installs

[Ayepecks]

My Windows is really acting up on my for some reason... it's asking me to install iTunes whenever I double click on the icon, even though it's installed. It's also showing a lot of hidden folders in my user folder as well as C:\ (e.g., it's showing "$Recycle.Bin" in C:\, and in my user folder it's showing the AppData folder). I don't know what's wrong, but it's getting really annoying... I recently went in my control panel and cleaned out some old programs, but none that should have changed anything on my computer like this (or change my user settings).

Any ideas on what to do?

[BajiRav]

Did you use any registry/system clean-up or tune-up programs?

[Ayepecks]

No. I just uninstalled programs (games, for example, and Opera) I no longer use.

Now everytime I click on the iTunes icon it tries to install it even though it's already installed. And whenever I try to load some games they're not accessing the user files correctly, which is in my Windows user folder.

Here's a screenshot just as an example of what I mean...

I've tried changing the folder properties to change hidden and system files, and it does nothing.

[BajiRav]

Can you create a new Windows user and check if iTunes works as that user?

[Ayepecks]

I went ahead and reinstalled it, but that's not the problem.

The problem is Windows having a problem accessing things in my user profile. And all the settings it's apparently changed.

Edit: UGH, this is REALLY starting to **** me off... it's %#@$ up so many of my programs now...

[BajiRav]

I've had problems where the user profile is corrupted and at that time only easy way out is to create another user. See if that works. :/ Not really a solution but still...

[Ayepecks]

Creating another user profile is a pain in the butt, as I'll just have to transfer all of my programs and my entire music library as well as my programs associated with them... I'm not wasting days of my time to do that. (Sorry if I sound snappy, thanks for the advice.)

EDIT: Ugh, whatever, I don't care anymore... time to bite the bullet.................... hello waste of a few days of fixing my documents and settings coming up.

18 hours just to copy my files from my old user profile to my new one.................. great........ so mad right now.

Edited December 3, 2009 by Ayepecks

[Ayepecks]

OK, I still have no clue what's wrong because things are still messing up. I can still see files that are system files and supposed to be hidden. What the hell... and I get files that are blue in text in explorer instead of black for some reason (I forgot what that means). What the hell is wrong with my PC?