My wallet.dat file is where you say it should be (C:\Users\your_user_name\AppData\Roaming\Particle\wallet.dat). I did the shortcut method and it's now appearing to load my wallet like last time so it could take over an hour or more to finish like last time.
Thanks for all the help......
Sounds like your wallet just needs to resync again. Let it run through and make sure at the bottom of the wallet it goes through the sync'ing process. Once it catches up to the network/fully syncs you should see your coins and transactions again.
Did you create a backup of your wallet by any chance? if not, you might want to create a duplicate of that wallet.dat file(though i tend to play it safe and create a backup of the whole "particle" folder within Roaming.