I use Mercurial (from Tortoise HG) on Windows as a Single User, Single Machine Version Control system. I had the directories of all my repositories backed up.
On a new machine, I copied back the directories. I also installed THG. THG doesn't seem to recognise the directories as repositories on it's own. i.e. in Explorer I don't see the checked out/committed icons on the file names. If I right click on a file, and go to the THG options, it does show me revision history etc. When I do open Repository on THG and point it to the directories, it does again show info.
How do I make it see the dir as a repository from Windows Explorer.
Also I haven't yet tried changing files, committing etc, no idea if it would work.
Seems like your only 'problem' is that you don't see the overlay icons in the Windows explorer shell. Otherwise everything's ok.
You can try to simply close/reopen explorer. If that doesn't work, a system restart will do in any case.