Travelmate 7750G-6494 Questions on "Restore Operating System and Retain User Data"

I have a Travelmaate 7750G-6494. Acer Chat's computer says that its 22-character alphanumeric "Serial Number or SNID you entered cannot be found in our system," so I can't get live chat. Here's are my two questions:

Question 1
My Acer Travelmate has Windows 7 ProfessionaL. Does Acer System disc "Restore Operating System and Retain User Data" option have any affect on:

the XP virtual machine; or
software installations and their settings; or
browser bookmarks and passwords?

Question 2
Will the backup of my User file to C:\Backup have all the User top level folders, such as My Documents, My Pictures, Favorites, and Downloads, and all subfolders of top level folders, have the entire tree intact, so that each file and folder will be in the same place of the tree as before the restore operation?

[Edited the thread to add model name to the title]

Accepted answers

All comments

Puraw

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/691884/questions-on-restore-operating-system-and-retain-user-data

All your installed programs and settings will be erased. What you need is: Restore the system to an earlier point, that will only restore the Windows Registry but not touch minor edited keys and will restore the system files.
https://www.wikihow.com/Use-System-Restore-on-Windows-7

billsey

Your TravelMate 7750G was from 2011 originally, so will no longer be in Acer's warranty system. That's why the SN and SNID don't work. The Acer recovery disc will wipe out everything and restore the computer back to the original factory image. You will lose all your data and applications that weren't part of the original build. The backup features will determine what is actually backed up? What software do you use?

Travelmate7750G

Purow wrote, "All your installed programs and settings will be erased," but that's a different option than the "Restore Operating System and Retain User Data" option. My questions were about the ""Restore Operating System and Retain User Data" option. I did restore the Windows Registry to the one I manually created 12:52 PM the day before I was no longer able to get in. I had set the computer to run checkdisk prior to restoring the registry, and checkdisk hadn't found any errors, so the 12:52 PM registry was fine. I ran System file checker and it reported that there were corrupted system files that it could not fix. I was only able to get into Safe Mode, so I used the boot DVD and got in, then made the mistake of clicking to open Firefox and the computer immediately crashed. Now I can no longer get into safe mode.

Travelmate7750G

By "I had set the computer to run checkdisk prior to restoring the registry" a few minutes ago, I meant to say "I had set the computer to run checkdisk prior to Startup." Checkdisk ran and didn't find any errors. So I manually saved that; the restore point was 12:52 PM. That's the one I restore to when the problem arose the next day.

Travelmate7750G

I just found a 04 Feb 2016 post by heynetboy, on Widnows SevenForums, asking "what data will be retained" by the "restore operating system and retain user data" option. The answer was, "Hi heynetboy and welcome to WSF. To put it simply! That means that the Operating System will be restored. But, anything you have downloaded, Created, installed or saved! Will still be there. Minus the service pack if you did install it." Software installations and their settings, and browser bookmarks and passwords, are not part of the operating system, but what will happen, if anything, to my Windows 7 XP Virtual Machine? The XP Virtual machine doesn't open when you Start Windows 7, so there is no reason to think there would be a problem with it. Once Windows 7 is running, you have to start the XP Virtual Machine to use it.

Travelmate7750G

Purow was correct, so the February 2016 reply to heynetboy, above, was incorrect. However, after the radio button selection to choose "Restore Operating System to Factory Defaults", "Restore Operating System and Retain User Data", or "Completely Restore Computer to Factory Defaults", it says you have to delete everything on you hard drive. How can it Retain your user data in C:\Backup if you deleted everything from you hard drive?

Thank you billsey for explaining (above) that the reason the Acer Live Chat computer said my computer's Serial Number "cannot be found in our system" is that Acer Live Chat is only available for computers that are still under warranty.

billsey

I still don't know just what you are running when you see the message "Restore Operating System and Retain User Data". Are you using the Windows Reset procedure, the Alt-F10 at boot Acer procedure, or a different backup restore process?

Travelmate7750G

Answer to billsey's "I still don't know just what you are running when you see the message "Restore Operating System and Retain User Data". What I'm running is the first disc of the 5-disc Acer disc set that has a radio button dialog with 3 choices, the second of which is "Restore Operating System and Retain User Data". Another radio button choice is to just restore it to the condition it was in when it left the Acer factory. That first disc has the word "System" on it.

billsey

OK, they have gone away from that process over the last several years, so I might or might not be right. Typically a factory recovery wipes everything and takes you back to square one, but in this case it sounds like Acer set it up so you could do a recovery that takes you back to the original OS with the user profiles still in place. My guess is that it will leave your data but not your apps. If you have upgraded the OS from the original Windows 7 then doing that wouldn't be wise since you would then have to go through the whole upgrade again, including all updates and the reinstall of your apps. What is your goal here?

Travelmate7750G

Re "they have gone away from that process over the last several years": The 5-disc set was sent to me by Acer when it was still under warranty. Re "My guess is that it will leave your data but not your apps": It says User data will be stored in C:\Backup. However, it says you have to delete everything on you hard drive. I would have thought their software would do that. Also, if I delete everything that's on the hard drive, how would it back up the User data to C:\Backup?

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