I see you got answer on the other...

What I meant was on most distributions you need to activate it, and I can guarantee you that MS (like many other software companies, including games alike) won't let you activate forever... I remember Crysis 2 had a limit of 3 activations and then you needed to call in, and because of several factors, I just went ahead and cracked it, like I always do with such pita software.

Same with with MS. I've even heard rumors that some needed to call in just because they changed mamaboard or CPU.

Also relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in

That's why many suggested Linux because there you at lest have more control and better ability to fix things yourself.

I understand that you want this restore to function, but trust me and others experience - Windows is good at three things; making things complicated, breaking itself, and gaming. In many cases the best (and fastest way) is to start over. And then choose a good image/backup software, like CloneZila f.eks. Never use MS products (like the backup/restore "feature") unless your job depend on it and you can't use what you want. I personally have never had any success with the internal one(s).

With CloneZilla it's straight forward and actually easy to do backup/restore, you just a big enough harddrive.

It's probably not lazy as it's the way it's intended to work. I really don't know details, sorry.

Not very stupid actually, some chipsets don't have native support for usb3.0. Some brands add the USB3.0 with a separate controller, wich sometimes, like Lexor stated, controll all the USB ports.
To give you exemple, my old laptop, has a 2nd gen Intel cpu without native support for USB3.0, so on the right side, Toshiba added a 3.0 port with a separate controller.

About Clonezilla, it's a Linux based OS- sort of- wich is built to clone partitions or drives (yes, it's Linux based but that doesn't mean you cannot clone Windows drives :D, I do it all the time).
I pretty much only use the "clone disk to disk" feature but you can also clone a disk into a image, etc.
You need a USB drive to run it. Just download and flash it on a usb pendrive with a tool such as Rufus, Universal USB Installer or Balena Etcher.


Also, I feel your pain, just a avalanche of information at the same time. Good luck!

Agree with you regarding all the messages telling you to do other things. Always pisses me off to no end, I ask how to do something I want and get told that I shouldn't want that and should do something else. Yeah, don't care, what I want is what I want and no justifications are required and won't end up wanting something else because someone else says so.
Regarding your particular issue though, there may be some misunderstanding regarding the use of the built in function though. The built in backup and restore function is meant to create an image of the disk at a particular point in time and restore that image later, NOT put in a fresh Windows install. In fact, you can say that its main purpose is to AVOID needing to do that in case of a problem. So, as I pointed out before, if you create a backup now and then restore it right away, you basically won't do anything, you'll just get the system as it is right back. Also as I said before, the image on that partition the computer came with SHOULD restore it to the way it was when you purchased it, along with all preinstalled programs and all. Still no idea how you could use the built in function to restore it to a partition other than C: though, not have everything you now have there be wiped and overwritten.
Nope. "Windows 7 Forums is an independent web site and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Microsoft Corporation."

Agreed the forums here respond well :) Your issue just seemed technical enough that i thought you might find an answer at those sevenforums, and no they are not connected to MS at all. Sign up is just the usual (now growing old fashioned!) method of giving an email and choosing a posting name and password etc.

But the main reason i gave the link was so you could go have a look at the posts already there, i often find a solution to a windows 7 problem already posted about and can use that to fix my own issues etc. They have a lot of specific forum types (installation issues / activation issues etc) so you might find a solution in one that most applies to your situation?

Sorry I didn't post a reply sooner. I think what happened was that I read the new posts yesterday but didn't have time to reply, so I was going to do it today, but then when I saw that there weren't new posts since the previous time I checked, I got confused and thought that there weren't any since I posted (because I guess I forgot - it all becomes a blur after a while). So anyway:

Well yeah, I guess there's that, but with an image it should stay in the exact same state that it's already in, which would include it being already activated, right?

Yeah, I think I may try CloneZilla. Is it better than AOMEI Backupper? I already have a backup that I made with that, but I can't get it to work either (of course I'm still trying to restore on a different partition of the same drive of the Windows that I'm running, so it complains).

Well that sounds like it might actually work, since it wouldn't be running Windows while it does its thing.

Actually I think that's basically what I've been saying, but thanks for clarifying, anyway. I never thought that it would reinstall Windows, per se, but it would just seem like it, since it was backed up just after installing it and some basic software.

Well I'll check that out, thanks. But how is signing up by giving an e-mail address and giving a username and password old fashioned?

That's a good point, too. I guess I should try a search. I've tried searches from a search engine and gotten some pages of forum postings, but I don't think they were on that site, so maybe I'd have better luck searching it directly.

Don't know that one, but if it took a full backup of a live system then I would say yes, CloneZilla is better.
Yes, it should.

Many places want telephone numbers and or two-factor authentication (with either a telephone number or another email address). MS Store and various 'free' email platforms all do this now (facebook even?).

Basically data-gathering has moved into the sphere of joining up on a new website/service, so their approach (at the sevenforums) is comfortably old-fashiond and not-so data-gathery (unless they changed it recently!) :)

Well I'm absolutely NEVER giving any of them my phone number!

OP, look into the internet archive project, like I advised you to a few days ago.

===
The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the print disabled, and the general public. Our mission is to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge.
===

Was able to find the Windows 95 SE install media(iso file) I needed to be able to play Civilization 2 Gold again thanks to the internet archive. Freeciv was pretty close to Civilization 2 Gold with a few tweaks, but was missing the unique scenario modes that Civilization 2 Gold had.


In fact, here's a link using the search term "windows 7 iso" https://archive.org/search.php?query=windows%207%20iso
Browse away, you might get lucky.

Thanks, and I'll look into that, but I'd also want to get a copy of Office 2010 (though I've tried Libre Office and it's pretty similar).

At this point I'm looking into Clonezilla (by the way, does it overwrite all files on a partition when you save an image there, or does it just add the image as a new file and leave everything else in tact?).

I'm also testing windows on a small partition that I made, but the main difficulty is getting all of my drivers to work, and even getting the USB ports themselves to recognize everything that I plug into them. I think I have most of the ports working now, but certainly not all.

I still have a bit of testing to do with Windows images just to see if it may be possible to still use the old image if I can get my USB ports to work before loading Windows (while using the recovery CD), and a couple more ideas to test, but I think I'm nearing the end.

How did you get Windows 95 to work though? I'm assuming you have much newer hardware, and I would think there would be incompatibilities with that OS and various drivers, etc.

I ran + installed Windows 95 inside a virtual machine, then installed Civ 2 Gold inside that VM (virtual machine).

Creating and running virtual machines is possible in windows and linux. VM's are actually pretty cool once you've gotten your head around the configuration stuff.

Robolinux has a extremely usef friendly preconfigured Virtual Machine environment, where you mount ISO files or physical CDs and create custom VMs. Other linux distros have a more involved process of downloading/installing the virtual machine environment.

Off the top of my head, VMware Player and Oracle Virtualbox are both run on Windows/linux, and are free to use.

Thanks for the advice, and I may look into it, but at this point some of the stuff that wasn't working may be working again (fingers crossed), but it's too soon to say, and I'm trying to juggle about 50 things. Some other problems occurred today but I think I finally fixed those too.

I guess one reason why I don't tend to bother with Linux is because Windows can usually do everything I want, when It's not being a huge pain, and is compatible with everything that I use. And also because I'm not really familiar with all of the little stuff, like the specific differences of how to do it in one OS vs. another, and I don't have any comprehensive manual, so it seems like it would be a huge pain to try to switch over and hope that everything works as well, and that I can figure out how to use it all.

Best advice I have is:

-Buy a new hard drive to install robolinux or Linux Mint on (robolinux has built in windows emulation whereas Linux Mint is very very WIndows 7)
-Take current hard drive with windows 7 installed out of your system and label it.
-Install the new hard drive, install whatever version of Linux
-When you get bored or want to play windows games linux can't do, swap out hard drives.

The above advice excludes anything like using boot-loaders to manage which hard drive gets selected for loading (the windows 7 hard drive or the new-linux drive), because you've had enough work just getting windows 7 "fixed" on your system.

Well, I'm not sure I'll be able to take that advice, for practical limitations which I don't have time to go into right now, but I'll look into the Linux stuff anyway. I suspect that at this point I should be able to actually do the restoration in the next couple of days (hopefully).

What do you mean by this exactly?

Also, I just find it a bit odd that he has no forum as far as I can see, and he makes it sounds like Robolinux has some "revolutionary innovative professional VM technology" when it's only scrips and VirtualBox.

A bit shady to hide the fact that you need to "buy" it, or now "donate" to his poor Cambodian "family" without proof. Unless there's a real review of this I wouldn't trust it. So it wasn't FREE like the icon on the desktop would like you to believe?

Seriously, it's like reading a car salesman's fast-tracked voice where he makes it sounds like you get way with more than you're paying for, to the point where he loose money on "giving" you the car. :D