Used The setting's and transfer wizard to back thing up before a fresh install, of course when I try to restore it say's the version used is incompatible with what's presently in use.

When I got my external hard drive a couple months ago I also tried the Vista Backup Tool for the first time and luckily I did some testing with it because I noticed that my desktop couldn't access the backup created by my laptop (because of rights) and that if my laptop died it would be completely useless to me. As soon as I noticed this I formatted the drive again and just did a straight copy of my files so that no matter what I'll be able to access them from any computer.

It was pretty scary finding that out though and I definitely recommend people not using it to do backups!

And sorry for your loss.

I backed up most stuff anyway, the only loss was my mail (which included all my serial numbers for Futuremark software).

Yeah I've had to remove updates on XP to find a compatible version to save peoples data.

A good trick to use is to run the transfer program off a a windows XP cd and use the same cd to transfer it back onto your system afterwards.

Ran into this a work to many times and found this to solve the problem.

Just my 2 cents.