Have Rebuilt OS and Need to Restore Files

[Artie]

My friend's computer wasn't working due to malware and I've rebuilt the OS
from an Image I made about a year ago. Before rebuilding it from the Image,
I performed I used the Windows Backup Utility and copied the c:\Documents and
Settings folder to a different HD.

After I restored the image, I updated several times with MSupdate, and
tweaked on the system.

I'm ready to run the Windows Backup Utility to restore the files. My
question is do I restore all of c:\Documents and Settings, or just parts of
it, such as only the userids, or even only parts of their
folders/directories.

I'm not sure if a wholesale transfer of the whole Documents and Setting
directory will cause problems, or reset any tweaking I've done.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

My friend's computer wasn't working due to malware and I've rebuilt
the OS from an Image I made about a year ago. Before rebuilding it
from the Image, I performed I used the Windows Backup Utility and
copied the c:\Documents and Settings folder to a different HD.

After I restored the image, I updated several times with MSupdate,
and tweaked on the system.

I'm ready to run the Windows Backup Utility to restore the files.
My question is do I restore all of c:\Documents and Settings, or
just parts of it, such as only the userids, or even only parts of
their folders/directories.

I'm not sure if a wholesale transfer of the whole Documents and
Setting directory will cause problems, or reset any tweaking I've
done.

Suggestion:

Only restore the files you want - like Favorites, My Documents, etc.

 

[Artie]

I don't really know what they use, and they certainly don't know where
everything is - thus they didn't do the backups at all.

I'm not even sure I even understand everything that is in the /Documents and
Settings file structure I now realize.

Looking at my own computer I see that my ID has a windows folder, but
another infrequently ID does not. So do I have to go looking at all the ids
on the other computer?

Do I restore only desktop, favorites, shared docs, and start menu per user
id that I create? (Meaning, I don't restore NTUser.dat, and all the hidden
folders of each ID.)

Do I ignore or restore the All Users structure?

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I don't really know what they use, and they certainly don't know
where everything is - thus they didn't do the backups at all.

I'm not even sure I even understand everything that is in the
/Documents and Settings file structure I now realize.

Looking at my own computer I see that my ID has a windows folder,
but another infrequently ID does not. So do I have to go looking
at all the ids on the other computer?

Do I restore only desktop, favorites, shared docs, and start menu
per user id that I create? (Meaning, I don't restore NTUser.dat,
and all the hidden folders of each ID.)

Do I ignore or restore the All Users structure?

/documents and settings/<username>
--> /my documents/
--> /favorites/
--> /desktop/

That covers most of the default stuff. I would restore it to a different
place than directly into their current/new profile and then move it into the
profile yourself (manually copy/move) after you confirm the restore was
successful.

It would be unusual, at best, for anything to be stored in the "All Users"
folder.

If they did have more than one user before - you will have to look in
multiple "Documents and Settings" sub-folders.

You may also be restoring old emails/contacts from some email client?

 

[Artie]

Email is via the web, so nothing to handle there.

I did the restores and then realized that Favorites didn't include IE
favorites as I'm not finding any of those in the restored accounts. I didn't
export them thinking that they would be in favorites.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Email is via the web, so nothing to handle there.

I did the restores and then realized that Favorites didn't include
IE favorites as I'm not finding any of those in the restored
accounts. I didn't export them thinking that they would be in
favorites.

Unless moved, \Documents and Settings\<username>\Favorites\ *is* where
Internet Explorer favorites are stored per individual user on a Windows XP
machine by default.

 

[Anshul]

I'm not sure if a wholesale transfer of the whole Documents and Setting
directory will cause problems, or reset any tweaking I've done.

A wholesale transfer won't cause any problems, but will leave a lot of
'broken' shortcuts around. You can do a registry scan to get rid of those.

Source:
Done something similar myself many times. On my system documents and
settings is on a different partition. So my image of C: drive contains
only the 'Windows' folder . This old Windows folder when retored after an
image restoration works smoothly with my the unchanged documents abd
settings folder.