Temporary Profile Problem

Hi all, firstly sorry if this is in the wrong place....

Yesterday I turned on my computer as usual to find that when I entered my password into my user log on, instead of "welcome" I got "preparing your desktop".

I didn't grasp quite what that meant (figured windows updates was to blame) until it loaded up and all of my desktop stuff was gone. Panic ensued, so I shutdown and rebooted. Logged back into my user account with no problem whatsoever. Thought nothing more of it, until it happened again this morning and it took me four tries of shutting down/rebooting to log into my user profile.

I've Googled the problem looking for advice on how to fix it but it seems most of the options require me to essentially start from scratch again by losing all my settings on this account. I don't want to loose what I've set up here as I finally have everything organized where I need it and it took me forever to edit up my Itunes alone and I know from past experience that creating a new username means having to do all that stuff all over again.

Is I guess what I'm asking is - is there anyway to fix this log in problem without having to set up a new username/profile or lose the settings and files etc that I've set up on my current (corrupt) account?

(I haven't installed/uninstalled anything new to my computer and it's practically brand new/only four months old)

I'd be very appreciative of any advice. Thanks all.