Accessing Time Capsule backups

I have installed the Time Capsule utility on the HP, but I cannot access any of the MacBook Pro back-up files.

Which exact version is your Time Capsule? Did you mean to say the AirPort Utility that is used to administer the Apple base stations? If so, the version that runs on Windows-based PCs is not designed to work with the 802.11ac versions of the base stations.

Regardless, you would not use this utility to access Time Machine (TM) backups. Normally, you would use the TM app on a Mac to do this. Accessing another Mac's TM backup should only be done if absolutely necessary and not as a normal process.

If you must access these backups, you basically have three choices to do so:

1. Use Migration Assistant on the "new" Mac to restore files from the "old" Mac.
2. By inheriting the other Mac's TM backups.
3. Using the Finder app on the "new" Mac to access the TM backups of the "old" Mac by drilling down into the TC's HDD. (Not recommended.)

Just to expand on what Tesserax has given you..

Only a Mac can read Time Machine backup.

What I would do is buy a USB drive of suitable size.. 500GB is usually enough but enough to hold the whole Mac OS install.

Start up your other Macbook in recovery mode, use setup assistant and restore the backup of the failed mac to the USB drive.. Make extra triple sure you use the USB drive as the target.

Once you have a USB copy of the Mac boot disk.. you can plug that into your HP computer and using special HFS+ read version windows explorer you can access all the files on the Mac.

Of course only files that are useful are things like word processor documents in format common to PC.. like MS Word.

Free version HFSexplorer.

http://www.catacombae.org/hfsexplorer/

We are encouraging people to use a different backup software. eg Carbon Copy Cloner. But SuperDuper is also popular.

Use it to make a clone of the Mac disk to USB drive plugged into the computer. This is hugely easier to access if something goes wrong because it is a direct clone. It is also bootable if you use CCC. That means you can plug the external drive into another Mac (has to be one very similar to the bad one).. and boot from the clone.. viola.. all your files exactly as per your old Mac.

Any files you want to share between different computers should be located on a disk that both can read.

Mac can read NTFS but not write to it. PC with help can read HFS+ but not write to it. So it is better to use a format that both OS can read natively.. ie ExFAT or FAT32 although neither are particularly great formats.

Using a proper NAS (A Time Capsule is not a NAS) can make file sharing between windows and mac easier because it probably is using a Linux format that neither Mac or PC can natively read or write.. but offers SMB protocol (some also offer AFP) which Apple also uses now so both can read and write to the drive. File sharing over a network is of course controlled by the OS in the NAS itself.

Then you have permissions problems. The Mac has increased permissions since Sierra and made it much more difficult for others to read the files.. although usually windows is not particularly bothered by Apple permissions.

It is best to create a directory in windows and then copy files to this directory / Folder from your Mac..

And of course the PC and the Mac need to share same software or at least be able to read files of a particular software. Eg MS Office is not a big problem except for page layout and fonts etc.

You will have big problems with photos for example on the Mac as PC does not have that Application.

I have a full clone of the disk on the AirPort/Time Machine.

Actually you don't have a clone.. you have a construct of files in unreadable form.

CCC produces a real clone.. it is directly bootable. You can find all your files in the folder where they are expected to be. To actually get Time Machine back restored to a computer is several hours work at least. You can boot a CCC clone directly. It is exact CLONE of your Mac's hard disk.