Hello all,
So I have my files backed up to a DVD + R.  I PLUGGED in hard drive to my friends laptop and did all of that, and will put hard drive back into original laptop and reformat with factory settings.   Problems:

1) They are all in .wim files.  So I can't tell what's what and if I have everything. How do I open or view these in their original formats?
2) I don't have all my files on the DVD's.  Some files it gives me a message saying: you must be running this on original administrator account.  But I can't. I'm using my friends laptop because original doesn't work.
3) How do I check if my "NOTES" were backed up too?  I am talking about the little DESKTOP notes you could add on windows 7.  I need those badly.

Thanks all!

There are many volunteers here that want to help you.
Do NOT format a drive until you are ready.
Please clarify what you want to do.
Are you trying to help a friend whose system failed?

The Windows file format you NAMED is explained here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Imaging_Format
Quote

...unlike  other disk image formats, a WIM file contains a set of files and associated filesystem metadata. However, unlike sector-based formats (such as ISO or VHD), WIM is file-based: The fundamental unit of information in a WIM is a file.
The primary advantages of being file-based is hardware independence and single-instance storage of a file referenced multiple times in the filesystem tree. Since the files are stored inside a single WIM file, the overhead of OPENING and closing many individual files is reduced. The cost of reading or writing many thousands of individual files on the local disk is negated by hardware and software-based disk caching as well as sequential reading and writing of the data.