Looks like this KB896344 is the real deal. Just one of the many hotfix's that were lost in the restore. At least the .dat files are being recognized by the wizard now.

update: This did work. After a fashion. I have all the important files back. It wasn't flawless. Seems FAST unpacks everything into a temp folder in windows/system32. The process failed to move the files from there to my Documents and settings folder. I found them when, on a hunch, I did a global search for a few files. Still have a few applications to reinstall... And where in the heck are my bookmarks.