Restoring programs on a laptop

Hello all,

I have a problem with Vista and I would appreciate someone's help! (sorry in advance if posting this in the wrong place)

I have a Compaq Presario laptop with Vista, which failed to start up last night. Using the built-in recovery program (via F11 on start-up attempt), I was given the choice of backing up my files before system restore. I did this (selecting all of the available options e.g. programs, user files, pictures, emails etc), and the information was transferred to my external hard drive as two files - called Backup.1.exe (2MB) and Backup.1.fbw (8GB). I then proceeded with system restore, and got my laptop back to its "as purchased" condition. All good so far.

Running the Backup.1.exe file on my external drive restored everything to my laptop's C drive, in a new folder called "System Restore Files". This folder contains the following folders (which have mirrors on the laptop C drive): HP, install, Intel, MSOCache, Program Files, SWSetup, System.sav, System volume information (which is an empty folder), Temp, and Users (which includes everything that was there prior to the crash i.e. all of my old application data, docs, email files etc.)

My problem: how do I get my old programs restored to working order on my laptop? Simply transferring everything from the back-up version of Program Files to the main C drive Program Files folder won't work.

Thanks in advance,
MudPuddles

Well, I'm hoping (perhaps naively) that the program back-up and restore option should avoid having to reinstall everything - some of te programs can't be reinstalled (no disk, limited internet purchase & download). Also, if I did reinstall, would I lose the files I created with those programs?