backup and restore

i have recently bought a dell laptop running vista ultimate. it developed a
fault and dell said that they had to re-install the operating system. so i
ran the backup function, storing my data on a flash drive.
after reinstallation of the operating system, i tried to restore the data
(the folder is visible on the flash drive) but i get an error dialogue box
headed Windows Backup which says

there was an unexpected error. backup has not been set up on this computer.
an administrator must first create a backup before you can restore files
(0x810000EE). backup will now close.

can anyone advise me what this means, and if i can recover all my historical
data from my flashdrive?
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zzzzjohn

Wow, it looks like you and I are the only two people on the internet
with this problem. I'm trying to restore an image I created on an
external harddrive, and am getting the same message about not being able
to restore because an administrator hasn't created a backup yet. Even
though I did create a complete system backup like, two hours ago.

I tried right-clicking and running as an administrator, but that didn't
help. Maybe I will google about disabling the UAC thing.


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thebazilist