Windows 7: System Recovery runs by itself?

So this morning, I booted my PC, which is an Asus KV-something. It still has a few of the preinstalled Asus applications, among others a Power Control application and a program called WinFlash. Not sure if it's relevant, but I'm at a total loss here, so just posting what I think could be related.

Anyway, I wrote my windows password and my pc proceeded to log in. It took quite a while, which it usually doesn't, and suddenly I'm greeted with a screen I'm not used to, saying "Preparing Your Desktop".
After a while of that, it finally logs on, but with the standard Asus background and with none of my usual desktop, start menu, or task bar objects. Also, all programs have had their caches, favorites, and user settings deleted. I'm not really sure what might be causing this problem, and Googling hasn't helped me much either. The only related thing I've found, was that it might be caused by a corrupted user profile. But from what I could understand, one symptom of the last would be being logged into a temporary account, which I am not.

Any help is appreciated.

Niels

EDIT: Okay, so I've solved this. A friend of mine told me he'd had the same issue, which he solved with a reboot. Tried the same and it worked. I had been hesitant with this, as I didn't want to risk overwriting any settings with a reboot. I am still interested in knowing what might have caused this, so I might avoid it in the future.