start new project; no windows folders showing up

hi all. cubase 6.5, win7 64 bit. yesterday i started a new project using one of my templates. cubase is not offering any drives or folder locations except the desktop. this happened about a year ago too when i was on cubase 6. can’t remember how i fixed it. did the trashing preferences but it’s still happening. i’ll unplug all my external drives and try again. anybody got ideas (apart from reinstall cubase or reinstall windows then reinstall cubase). everything was working normally yesterday until this error. i’ve included a screenshot. for the moment i’m having to put new songs on the desktop. cubase can still load and save existing songs that are on my other internal drives. ed

i can’t be the only person on the planet to suffer this twice on 2 completely different pc systems?