Unless I did something wrong, restoring is useless
Firs before posting my question I read this page which almost gave me an aneurysm.
I have a pretty simple setup and request. I have a 240GB SSD that I back up to a 1TB hard drive. I prepared the hard drive by formatting it so it had no files on it at all.
As I went through the initial set up I believe I did everything I had to do to get it set up. Backups seem to work properly. I have it set up so that it creates a backup every two hours.
Okay, so it seems like I'm moving along just fine. Today I decided to re-install Windows due to excessive windows explorer crashing. Every day at least 3 or 4 times.
So once I finished installing Windows I installed the most important couple of apps knowing I had good backups.
I open Acronis and find my backups. I choose the applications I want to rerstore. When done checking them off I click proceed and wait. Looks like everything is working as it should. When done I reboot and to mu surprise find that NONE of the applications are back in the Start menu and when I navigate to the Program Files folder and try to run them from there, most do not work.
What is the point of backing up all of these files if I can't truly restore them so they work.
I understand that applications have appdata files and some additional stuff in the Windows registry, and foolishly I thought Acronis was smart enough to backup and then restore these things. I see absolutely no way of restoring my applications so that they work. I am now past my 30 days so I take it a refund is not forthcoming. But I feel as ripped off as if someone stuck a gun to my head and demanded my wallet.
Yeah I'm angry!!!
shadowsports is correct. This is a Windows issue, not an Acronis True Image issue. You have misunderstood the nature of application backups.
When you selected those applications to restore, you were trying to do something that is impossible. Acronis True Image did what you told it to, which was to restore those application files (likely the .exe files). But, what you wanted was to restore working applications, and that is not possible in the manner you chose.
An installed Windows application is much more than its .exe file. It also consists of numerous regisry entries, dlls, possibly special directories and temp files, path modifiers, and more. There's no way that any backup tool can restore an installed Windows application to working state just by restoring its .exe (unless it's a stand-along portable app).
Create a full disk backup, selecting the checkbox for the entire disk (not just individual partitions). That ensures that you have everything you need, and you won't need to understand how the disk is laid out with possible hidden partitions. A full disk backup captures everything, and is the simplest, safest backup method.