I had to restore my computer (running Windows 7) back to its factory default, so I ran the HP recovery manager disc and chose to reformat my computer. Before doing this I was given an option to backup my current files to a DVD, and I did so; getting the confirmation of a successful DVD burn.

Booting up my computer everything looks like it did when I first purchased it (like expected). But when I pop in the backup DVD and run the recovery EXE inside it, the application creates a directory inside C:\System Recovery Files which contains the empty directories: [(^_^)] and Program Data.

So essentially what I'm getting out of this is a failure in creating a back-up. Which is not only confusing but incredibly frusterating.

Is there any way that I can recover the files lost in the