Windows 10: Difficulty Restoring from Backup

Please be sympathetic with my lack of knowledge. But I will try my best to explain my issues.


I have an old Lenovo Y580 laptop, which has been progressively slowing down each time a Windows update is issued. I know it is old, but I only do some basic computing (eg tax returns) every now and again.

The last Windows 10 update finally ground it to a halt. After Googling etc and talking to Lenovo for two days I decided to do a complete reset.


Prior to the reset, I backed up my files using the Windows backup utility. I did not select the historical files option, which I now know ( I think) was a mistake.

The reset was successful, and I went through the process of setting up Windows. And my computer is now responding quite fast.

So today I tried to recover my user files. I noticed several backups on my external HDD. Some history. I did a backup in August 2019, and this was one option that I could see when asked which backup to use.

I could also see a backup which looked like an incremental backup from August 2019 to December 2019. I selected this option. It looks like that it has only restored files added/changed since August 2019. Does this make sense? Do I now go back and restore the August 2019 backup as well?


And this comes to my second issue. It looks like my new Windows 10 user account does not have Administrator rights, and I cannot access the directory C:\Users. So I cannot see what was restored. I get a message Access denied. I have tried to run controluserpasswords2, based on some Googling, to give my new user account Administrator rights, but i get no response. What do i need to do to give my new user account Administration rights? And once i do this sucessfully I assume that I will be able to access C:\Users in Explorer to see the files that have been restored.


Thank you in anticipation.

:)

 

Free hard drive backup/restore program?

I am looking for a free (freeware) program that will back up and restore a hard drive. I'm looking to clone a few external hard drives. If the program will backup the used space instead of the whole drive this will be awesome! Thanks for any suggestions.

 

Free hard drive backup/restore program?

Obviously you're looking for something besides your Xp Pro utility that does this?

 

Restoring Windows 10 Image using Macrium Reflect


In addition to the above. Here's my suggestion in step by step.
I assume you have Macrium Installed in your current HD and already made a backup copy.

1. Connect your new HD via USB port and boot up.
2. Run Macrium, click on Restore tab then select the Backup Image that you made to restore
3. click on "select a different target disk" then select your new HD as destination
   
   
   
4. Proceed to restore then Shutdown and disconnect the old HD and replace with the new HD
5. Boot up with your new HD.