Windows 7: Restoring backup from one pc to another.

Hi. My HP dv9667ea laptop does not work anymore, so I bought an Acer 5750 laptop. I now want to move the files (music, pics, documents) that I backed up on my external hard drive to my new laptop. I used windows 7' (which I installed on my HP a while before it broke down) back up function in Control panel, to do the back-ups. How can I go about to simply move the files from the external hard drive to my new pc's hard drive. I don't know enough, but I do not want to restore to some previous point or something along those lines, as this is a new pc and does not need restoring. Someone said that because the old pc was different with different hardware to the new pc it may damage the new one. Forgive my ignorance. Any suggestions? Thanks.

There is a difficulty in transferring the operating system and installed (particularly licensed) applications from one PC to another.

You can transfer your personal file/folder backups easily enough.
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The reason is that there are 2 types of backups. Images which are snapshots of the whole disk. These can be difficulty for technical and licensing reasons.
Personal file/folder backups are different technically and easier to move around.

You mentioned that you used Windows 7 Backup & Restore to do your backups. Then all you have to do is run Backup & Restore in your new machine and restore files that you want. For more info, search 'Restore files from a backup' in Windows Help & Support.

Thanks preiius and mjf. So I then simply plug in my external hard drive into my new pc and run the restore option and select what I want to restore (i.e. my pictures and music etc). I don't then have to restore the whole system image as such? Will this then simply put the files I'm restoring back onto my new pc? E.g. it will dump the pictures in the Picture folder, music in the Music folder etc.

You actually should not attempt to restore an image. You want to just restore your personal files and folders. I find the "Select another backup to restore files from" is what I prefer and just browse to the backup set you want stored on your external HDD.

I can't remember if restore to original location causes a problem if some folders aren't pre-existing. If so then nominate where to restore to.

If you try and restore a system image to a different computer, you will fall foul of Microsoft's EULA conditions.

Restoring personal files shouldn't pose too many problems, but because you are restoring to a different location you may have to choose where you're restoring them to.

Best bet is to create a new folder on your new computer and call it something like Restored Files and restore your data to it. Once you've done that you can copy/move them to your Library folders on your Acer laptop.

Thanks again for all the advice. I will attempt soon.

Take a look at this tutorial:
Restore Backup User and System Files

You will be fine restoring an image to a different machine.

Depending on the hardware , it may start up ok.

If not, you can run one of the commercial apps. - e.g. Paragon Adaptive Restore which only takes a couple of seconds.

( I have successfuly done it by hand - a few adjustments to the system hive - not that difficult )

You then just need to put in a product key which is valid for that new machine.

You can move images by sysprep..ing your PC etc to deal with driver issues but the big issue is licensing not only of the Windows OS but bought/licensed third party software.
I did this recently and my preference is to have a clean install on your new hardware
- sort any unique driver issues out
- activate all licensed software
- do a straightforward restore of personal file/folders as per my #5 post.