Cubase 6.5.5 all preferences erased and not saving

In Win 8.1, after mistakenly opening Cubase without turning on my UR824, I opened Cubase 6.5.5 and it asked my what audio interface I wanted to use…I selected it and it loaded as normal, but none of my recent projects showed up, and none of my templates showed up either…

So, I selected an empty template and found that all of my plugin and VSTi information has also been erased, VST connections are gone etc.

I set them up again, but every time that I restart Cubase, it seems to revert to an initialized state. Also, every time I start Cubase it asks me to register.

I have had other issues with with Cubase since making the switch to Win 8 with VST bridge for example.

I never had anything like this happen with Win 7 64 Bit. I’m thinking the switch was not worth it. Thankfully it was a cheap upgrade version.

Is this a known issue in Win 8? Is there a way to solve this issue, or am I screwed here with no option but to do a clean install of Cubase, or revert back to Win 7?