Question about Win7's 'Backup&Restore'

Ok, this question is split into two parts.

1.) I recently had some sort of registry corruption or something, due to a virus, in my Win 7 Ultimate 64Bit and I had to do a clean install of the same OS again.

But before I had formatted my C:\ drive, I had taken a Backup of the 'Users', 'AppData' and 'ProgramData' folders to restore after the re-install.

I formatted C:\ and did a clean install and was about to restore my files when I thought 'What if the virus was backed up too?'

And that's the first part. Do viruses get backed up too when I use the Backup&Restore feature? Is there a way to scan my backup file? Is there any way to prevent viruses from getting backed up? Should I not restore my files? Is it enough if I have an active anti-virus shield to immediately detect the virus when I restore the files?

2.) As I was worried about the virus I tried restoring only a few, select, files and folders to their original location (stuff like custom themes, Firefox's bookmarks etc).

BUT I got this error...



And that was only 1 file. I tried with multiple files, single folders, multiple folders and taking ownership of the folder I was restoring to but nothing helps. I used the administrator account when I backed up and I am using the administrator account right now.

What is wrong??? How do I fix this?


Hoping for a quick reply,
T4

mborner said:

Well, the good new is, your file was restored. The warning is just to let you know that the file was not restored to it's original location. This is probably because your previous file structures/libraries was modified from the default Windows setup. For example, if you had created a new folder in your libraries and the file you are trying to restore was in that folder, you'd get the warning because that folder did not exist in the default Windows install. If you click "view restored files" you'll be able to find its new location. If you go back into your new install and set up your file structure exactly as you had it previously, this warning should go away.
A virus can easily be backed up and can reside anywhere on your HDD. I'm not sure if a virus scan is able to scan a backup file or image on an external drive. All I can say is, you can try it and see what happens. Knowing exactly where the virus was located originally helps, also.

Ok, thanks for your answer :)

I just restored everything to a new folder and slowly copy pasted them back to where I wanted them.