Actually Desktop 3 failed back in April. It is one of 4 desktop computers that sit under my desk connected to a keyboard, video, mouse switcher that let me use them for dedicated purposes.
Desktop 3 really didn't have anything too important on it, I kept it for legacy applications I used back in 2005/2006 and as the music server for my stereo. So I wasn't too concerned when it went down. Early in May I realized I had a spare system sitting in storage so I figured I'd just pop the hard drive out of Desktop3 into the new system and be up and running. Not quite so easy. Turns out Windows doesn't like having its hardware changed, it's got all sorts of hardware information in the registry.
So I do a Google search and find instructions how to fix the problem. Unfortunately that process ended up trashing the registry so I put the system in a corner to work on later.
Of course I can't find the backup (if I made one that long ago).
Then over this past weekend I find the backup drive stuck in my drawer of blank hard drives (I use them like very large floppy disks). So its good news and bad news.
The back up is pretty old. Desktop 3 wasn't important so it didn't get the same frequency of backup (in fact it looks like the backup could be several months old).
The good news is the system is running. The bad news is its missing a couple of programs I know I installed and forgot about (for the music subscriptions). But I'm pretty sure I can recover them.