No finder windows on startup

Hello,
I have just upgraded to Mountain Lion on my mid-2012 MB Air. When I start the machine the objects on my desktop, e.g., desktop printers, are present, however, there are never any finder windows no matter how many I have created prior to shutting down. I thought about deleting the <com.apple.finder,plist> preferences file and restarting, but this file doesn't appear to get created any longer, or at least spotlight doesn'f find it on my machine.
What can I do so that I have the same number of finder windows on startup that I had on shutdown and in the same location (this didn't seem to be an issue in 10.7)? There isn't anything that, to me, seems like a setting for this in the Finder Preferences panes.
Some extra information:
I had to have the logic board and SSD replaced last week. The Apple Store installed 10.8 for me after the repair. I did not want to use MigrationAssisant or whatever it's called in case it brought over some corruption from my previous Lion system. So I planned to do a drag and drop of my data and re-download all my applications. I began by dragging over only the mail and mail downloads folders from my 10.7 TimeMachine backup. Before dragging any other data over, it then became clear that the new 10.8 system had some terrible problems; these occurred in my (Admin) account and in a new guest account I created (so not related to the mail and account data I had dragged over). I re-downloaded and re-installed 10.8 and did the system updates. Things seem to work ok now in so far as the issues that occurred before no longer do, BUT with the Finder windows exception mentioned above.
Thank you.
Richard

It is normal behavior on log in NOT to have an open Finder window.
If you want them open when you Shut Down on your Apple menu in the dialoge window do you have "re-opnen windows when logging back in" check marked? It should be.
In System Preferences > General do you have "Close windows when quitting application" check marked?
It shouldn't be.

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