Express HD2.5 won't restore

[mdeninno]

I had an Sony XP PC running Express HD2.5. Every Sunday it would faithfully perform what I thought was a FULL backup. I never needed to restore a file, and I had comfort that if I had to, I could rely on that backup... until now.

 

My XP PC crashed (some virus got in, even though I had McCaffee installed) so I had to restore to factory, deleting all my files. No problem, though, I have backup! Then my nightmare began.

 

I decided to buy a new HP Windows 7 PC, and restore the files from the Sony to the new HP. I started the restore process, it finishes in 2 seconds and doesn't restore a thing!

 

I contact tech support, and they said I would need to rebuild the catalog. No problem... 4 hours later I have a rebuilt catalog that is ~1.1GB where the original catalog is ~1.4GB. OK, maybe it is more efficiently organized?

 

So, I attempt to restore from the backup that was done on the Sony XP on 4/11, using this new, rebuilt catalog. It restores many files, but I expected there to be (let's say) 1000 files, but there are only 85 restored.

 

Again, I contact tech support and the tech advises me that my "full backup" performed every Sunday since the very first FULL backup in December, 2008 was only an incremental backup, and that I'd need to restore from every single restore point since December, 2008, one-by-one, through the 4/11 restore point.

 

What I don't understand: the original catalog (before rebuilding) showed ALL the files in all directories that I would expect to be there. But it doesn't "work" as a catalog to restore files -- it just fails to restore.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions beyond restoring from each and every restore point? As it turns out, the drive began running out of space and prompted me to get rid of old backups -- so I complied and now I think I've deleted that original, first-time FULL backup the first time Express ever backed up.

 

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you!