Need an Ubuntu backup walkthrough

[adambond]

Ok, my situation may not be unique, but I couldnt find exactly what I need to know.

I have a dual boot system. XP on harddrive one. And Ubuntu on harddrive two. I recently 'upgraded' my Ubuntu and ofcourse now its a trainwreck.
Ive managed to be able to log in to it, and find all my files are still there. Just the useability of the Ubuntu is crap. No menus, no dock, like basically part of ubuntu itself is missing.

Anyways, I managed to get into it and create a backup disc. And located it onto my XP harddrive. I will probably go ahead and make another backup and dump it onto a USB just for safety. (I dont know what im doing (obviously) but I looked through the 'backup' file, and it appears to be a crap load of .tar files, which I believe is correct.)

So thats what I got, and heres what I want to do. I want to now, install Ultimate Edition on the hd I used for Ubuntu.

And then I want to restore my ubuntu backup (that is now on the XP harddrive) into ultimate edition so I basically get all my files, photos, music, etc etc back.

Is this doable? If so, is there a walkthrough around here?

Can I install UE without erasing/overwriting the crippled Ubuntu (thats on hd2)?

Thanks in advance,

[ahallubuntu]

~

[adambond]

From what I can remember (im in xp right now), what I did was (in the botched 12.04 ubuntu) I went to the upper right corner, and dropped down the menu that says restart, turn off, log off, etc. And I clicked on 'account settings' i think. And that brought up something similar to 'control panel' in windows (alot of icons like 'display' 'monitor' etc etc. From there I clicked on the icon that said something like 'create a backup'.... It was pretty easy. I just told it where to go, and in a few hrs, it was done, and appears to be all there.

[adambond]

I guess, as long as I can confirm ive backed up everything I want to save (which is everything) I'll just do a clean install. Just need to learn how to confirm it. I cant get UE to install on my damn laptop (other computer) though. That would allow me to check my backup file on another computer. I tried boot from USB and cd. No dice there.

[dandroid13]

You can try to open the tar files using 7zip or something, to check if your files are there.