I made progress!
I can now boot win7 with an old profile. I can access the backup of my user profiles now as well.
But, one question:
How can I tell windows where to look for the profiles now? I cant put them back in the original location because that drive letter (d:) is now gone (dead...
Ugh.
I have win7 booting from a ssd drive.
i moved the user profile folders to another drive to try to reduce the data files filling up the ssd drive.
Well- the drive died.
i have all the dat backed up on another drive, but I can't start windows because it can't find any of the user profiles...