Windows 7: Duplicate Photos in Ms Photo Premium

Hi
I have a really irritating problem.

I have used Ms Photo Premium (originally Ms Picture It!) for a good few years now without problems. It may be old and may not have the attriutes of more complex photo-editing programmes, but I am used to it and it does everything I need in collating, editing and storing photographs.

Problem has only just cropped up: several folders containing pictures (almost 1,000, most .jpg but a few .png) have decided to duplicate themselves without any help from me: i.e. they were fine when I last used them one day, but had grown duplicates when I next accessed the programme. I immediately took out my trusty 16 GB USB key, formatted it and used it to copy all my pic's. They appeared without duplicates. To investigate this, I accessed my lappy via my network and copied all my pic's to that too. On both the USB key and the laptop, the pic's have no duplicates. In the knowledge that I have backups, I accessed the original folders and pic's on the PC, some of which are "greyed-out". I attempted to delete the copies, but the duplicated and deleted folders and contained pictures remain as "ghosts", which can neither be accessed or removed.



My long explanation leads me to the question: is the best solution now to uninstall & reinstall Photo Premium, in case it is corrupted on the PC? I also have a backup image which probably contains the same problem.

Any advice welcome, thanks everyone.