First, don't panic. Panic causes more problems than it solves.
Next, go to folder options and on the view tab, make sure "view hidden files and folders" is checked.
Then go to user\username\roaming\appdata and look for tekcoin folder. If it's there, navigate to it. Copy wallet.dat to a safe location. This will be your most up to date wallet.
If it's not there, go ahead and use your backup. In most cases, you'll recover everything unless you have some new keys. This is not guaranteed, however, so take this as a lesson to REGULARLY backup your wallet.dat file.
I'd also recommend before doing any of this that you do a hard reset (power off) and see if everything clears up. This could just be Windows being its ugly self.
Thanks Biomech
I don't panic, and because I'm in crypto I have learned to accept losses, even total. I guess my search parameters were incorrect in the beginning but I did end up finding the folder with my latest wallet.dat before I got your response and it was exactly where you said. Thank you for your prompt reply. I guess just downloading the wallet and replacing its virgin wallet.dat with the one I just backed up is all I need to do. Is that it or do I have to copy any other of the associated files from the roaming folder? Will my password be attached to the wallet.dat or to something else?
Thanks