I am actually surprised no one has said this.
Here's an old windows trick. Run Scandisk.
- In XP, open up my computer.
- Right click your main drive (usually says local disk (C
). - Click on properties.
- Click on the tools tab.
- Click within the Error checking divided window, the button "check now" then click start, let it run until complete you should get some prompts.
I had the EXACT same problem you are having, come to find out during a reboot or power outage windows did a weird remirror of most of the harddrive. All of the files were copied but hidden so there were 2 of nearly every file. I figured this out, some other way than running scan disk but it solved the problem, after I had reinstalled windows on another harddrive thinking the drive was shot.
-Mike