Might have screwed up the C:\ProgramData folder...

Hey there

I've been using xxcopy for a while to mirror my important data, which are
all on my D: drive to an external USB drive.

The other day I thought, "but wait, there's also the icons (if nothing else)
in the shared start menu folder, which is on the C: drive, maybe I should
include that." These icons were inside the C:\ProgramData folder, so I
thought that maybe there were some other important things in there I wasn't
aware of, so I decided to just back up the entire ProgramData folder.

Blech! Xxcopy kinda went into an infinite recursion, copying stuff from
C:\ProgramData\Application Data\Application Data\Application
Data\Application Data\... etc. I found out that this "Application Data"
folder was actually a junction, or symlink if you like, to the ProgramData
folder itself, hence the recursion.

Weird part was, "Application Data" didn't show up in Explorer or in a
command prompt, which junctions usually do (I use them myself alot, so I was
puzzled that I couldn't find it). I thought something "bad" was up with this
folder, and not really hesitating to think it properly through, I removed
the "junction" with a 'junction /d "application data"', which did indeed
succeed. No more recursion, no more woes. Except...

I now find that Windows Search is no longer able to start. Looking on the
Internet, other people've had the same woes, but for different reasons, and
while they fixed it by clearing out some temp folders, this does not work
for me. I tried creating a new "application data" junction, but this does
not result in the same. I realized too late that this is a virtual folder
type of thingie, so lots of stuff is probably going on behind the scenes
that I have no clue about. A reboot did nothing, by the way.

I should say that I also recently installed SP1, which COULD be the cause
for Windows Search no longer working, but I'm pretty much positive that I've
used the search index in the meantime (I used it extensively), so I'm more
or less ruling that out. I'm pretty sure it's my wrongdoings with the
"junction /d" command that put me in this situation.

I'm just not sure what to do, so I'm turning to you guys. Any ideas?

Thank you,
Daniel, Denmark