Haven't actually seen anything identical but I would suggest running
chkdsk c: /r
and letting it finish all five stages and see what it reports back (you'll get a prompt something to the effect that it can't lock the volume, just respond with a y hit enter and reboot the machine)
then a manual defrag, maybe even a couple times
And if the problem persists, then maybe we can assume that the desktop gadget information has also stopped responding and is erroneous