Comment by hollander

I've helped people who lost access to their Windows 7 home directory. It didn't mean they ended up in commandline mode, but it meant their home folder was recreated from scratch. Many things didn't work anymore.

I bet 99% of Windows users can't solve that by themselves. I don't see any difference with your problem.

The problem you describe is bad as you can't use the computer at all, while my problem created a false illusion that the home folder was OK as it was still there. That the old one was renamed, made invisible, and then the new one got the old name - didn't help at all.