I had a few hundred photos on a memory card and having downloded them to the PC, I went to delete them from the card.
I selected all the pictures but by mistake, I clicked on Create Shortcut, rather then delete. I had created a shortcut to every picture! Never mind, I deleted the shortcuts and emptied the bin and carried on and deleted the pictures from the card.
Next day on restarting the PC, all the shortcuts were back. I tried getting rid of unused shortcuts and on rebooting, they're back again and also still there in the folder called unused shortcuts too!.
It's not drastic at all and is very easy
You just choose a date which is just before the prob occured and your pc is back to how it was set up on that date. All you lose are any programmes installed since the problem occured.
Click on start > all programmes > accessories > system tools > system restore. Check the box restore my computer to an earlier time and then click next.
Click on a date(before prob) and click next.
Wait for it to do it's thing.
Unfortunately having gotten over my fear of restoring, I followed your clear instrcutions but which ever date I pick (bold numbered dates) it concludes as unable to restore to that date. ?