All Office, Picassa in fact all software lost memory of file location.

[gerard1970]

After a large update on 10th Jan 2013 all the software on my dads computer lost the location of files.
Outlook had no emails in it. It no longer new where it had been keeping its emails. Picassa 3 had no photos in it as it "forgot" where the photos were. Word had no recent documents etc. All software on the PC lost its memory. I have just listed a few examples.
I have fixed it all after some swearing as best as I could but I was really wondering how/ what happened?
Cheers
Gerard

 

[NoelDP]

I doubt this is a n update problem - I've asked a Mod to move the thread to somewhere more appropriate.