File restoration from old My Book Essential

I recently backed up my Windows 7 files on my WD My Book Essential WD1600100032 prior to techie erasing/cleaning my hard drive.  Now all is well on the PC but can’t restore my Word document and picture files .  Last week was able to locate my 9 years worth of Word documents as well as thousands of pictures.  When tried to restore Word documents to my PC got message that “The restore did not complete successfully.  Restore encountered a problem while validating the zip file.”

I don’t know how I was able to locate the doc files as now I can’t find them.  However, I can find and access all my pic files but can’t restore them.

When I try to restore pic files, I get message “Windows backup file has not been set up. Windows could not find backup for this computer.” When I click of “Select another backup to restore files from” Windlows finds the files (some?  all?) but is unable to take action.  I get message “Windows was not able to load the selected backup … a valid backup does not exist…”

Obviously I’m not a techie.  I tried at length to contact a live support person with WD but was unable to get clear phone connection with someone who spoke English clearly.  This was very frustrating.

I’m at wit’s end.  My pics are not important but I desparately need my Word files as important medical records are stored there.  Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated!

Welcome to the Community.

It seems like the backup was made using Windows Backup as opposed to a Western Digital backup application. If so, the folloing artible may address your current situation:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/restore-files-backup#1TC=windows-7

If not, then Microsoft Support should be able to provide some guidance.