Drupal 7 and the "You do not have any administrative items" error

If you've upgraded Drupal recently and noticed that the admin page is empty and returns a You do not have any administrative items error message, then this basically means that your menu table is a little wonky. Another tell-tale sign that you've got the same problem as I did is that the admin page will have the title, Administer rather than Administration. Fixing this is pretty straightforward, if a little painstaking. To do so, make sure that the Menu module is enabled and perform the following steps:

• First, navigate to the menu module's administration page at admin/structure/menu.
• Look for the Navigation menu and click on the List links option.
• You should have an Administer link here. Click on the reset option next to it and confirm the procedure in the ensuing screen.
• You should now be on the Management menu's administration page and the Administer link should now be rightly renamed to Administration.
• Use its drag and drop and position it right at the top of the menu structure.
• Similarly, drag and drop other parent menu items in this list such as Structure, Content, etc., and position them as the immediate children of the Administration link (as they are on a new Drupal 7 installation).
• Save the changes by clicking on the Save configuration button.
• As an added precaution, if any of the links on this page have a reset option, click on it and reset the item.
• Visit the admin page and all your links should be visible and in the right order.

The issue is caused due to an upgrade bug in Drupal which (I believe) either does not account for menus which have been moved around or has messed up an update to the menu database tables. There is also a possibility that other menus on your site have also been affected. Clicking the reset link and reordering appropriately should do the trick for them as well.

Hope this helps :)