My friend called me over to her store she own. Some how all of a sudden after turning off computer by pressing the power button (not by the correct shutdown way) and turning back on later that day, none of her applications work. ie. Word will say that it is not installed for this user. The weird thing is there is only one user on the computer when logging in and when going to the Control Panel/ User Settings. I did go to Documents and Settings to see how many user folders where there and found 3. An Administrator, Front Desk (which is the one she normally logs into), and Local~. When I entered the Local~ folder it was empty. What could have gone wrong. None of her applications like her POS (Point of Sale) software is able to run so she can ring up sales. I tried to go into Safe Mode and take permission of the C: drive under the Administrator account, but when I logged back in under normal mode the screen stayed black. All I was able to see was the Task Manager when I pressed Ctrl-Alt-Del, so I restarted back into Safe Mode and changed permission back to her Front Desk user and when I rebooted in normal mode her desktop came back but still unable to use apps. I think the only option is to re-install the OS and apps. Is there another way?