What is the best way to reload from an external hard drive?

DrSiepser

I got the blue screen of death, my local microcenter downloaded everything to an external drive, completely wiped my laptop drive. They reloaded the latest version of Windows, handed me back my computer and the external hard drive. The last time I downloaded an external hard drive into windows it did not go well. I ended up with a whole new folder and another layer between me and my files. What is the best way to reload from an external hard drive onto my Lenovo Thinkpad with a intell Core i7.

Scary_Guy

The best way would be to switch to Linux. However assuming you don't want to do that here is how I restore Windows systems.

In the file manager you'll want to show all hidden/system files and their extensions. Then you want to navigate to C:\Users and copy SOME of your backed up user directory into that. You have to be picky about what you copy over though and it never works completely. But backing up things like your game and web browser directories usually goes very well.

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/local-localnow-roaming-folders-windows-10 is an article detailing a little bit of the inner workings. This is where the meat of the data for your programs is. Again you have to copy through trial and error. I'm not responsible if you mess up your box as I'm just some guy on the internet who happens to know things. I don't even work for MC.

All that said best of luck (unless you already have it sorted by now, in which case I hope it went well.)