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Recovery fails

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Win 10 system down.  Can't sign into my account.  Unable to resolve.  My C:\Users\XXXX folder is missing.  Tried to restore the folder from an earlier Acronis backup created before the date of the system problem but it reports several files "failed to recover."  Too many for me to continue clicking "Ignore" at the Retry-Ignore-Cancel prompt. Then tried to recover entire C drive but same problem with files not recovered and needing a manual response for each one.  My backups are on an external drive and backups are daily with a full backup each week.  Can't understand why there would be a 'failed to recover' message for certain files.  Thanks foe any input.

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Robert, welcome to these user forums.

If this is a Files & Folders backup image then you cannot just restore these when you are running the Windows OS as they are locked / in use by the OS, hence why you will see messages for such files.

If you need to recover these files, then you need to do so with a Disk & Partitions backup image ideally, and this should only be done when using the Acronis bootable Rescue Media, not from within Windows.

Even trying to restore these files from a Files & Folders backup image using the Rescue Media can be problematic as there may be other linkages to these files in the Windows Registry that are not included in the backup.

I agree with Steve - you can't restore your user profile folder while logged in as that user.  There are many hidden files/folders in the users APPDATA folder that are actively in use by Windows and 3rd party applications when the user profile is active.  

Attempting to restore an entire user profile as a file/folder recovery may work at a data level (using offline rescue media so the profile is not active would allow this to occur).  However, there's a lot more going on in user profile than just traditional "files".  Other registry pointers to the user profile in the Windows registry may not jive with the restored files (for instance, say you changed your Windows password recently, but want to restore the user profile in an attempt to be able to log in with the old password - it doesn't work like that because the OS has other registry keys and settings that will still look for the current password and enforce it).

Steve, thanks the the reply.  When I opened Acronis 2017 in Windows and saw the simple "click here" wizard to recover files and/or drives from my daily disk backups I didn't consider any conflicts/complications within Windows itself.  I just lazily assumed Acronis would handle all the inner workings.  I will get educated on the rescue disk.  The Acronis recovery wizard in Windows even offers recovery of the entire computer so I assume in that case, there are no areas of possible conflict.  Thanks again for the quick response and sharing of your knowledge of the product.

Bobbo, ditto my reply to Steve.  Thanks for your kind and helpful reply.  I definitely thought the revovery scenario would be more 'point and shoot' but I now understand there are complexities to a recovery that I had not anticipated.  Wish me luck :-)

Robert, how'd it go?

Thanks for the follow up.  I did a full system remount from a prior date and everything appears to be normal.  I'm still a bit nervous because I don't know what caused the problem but so far so good.