Have you used System Restore?

Me too, what Christer said. Never send a boy to do a man's job. Image your boot partition regularly.

 

Agree with Christer and 'dude on that their is no substitute for imaging, but I've never had a problem with SR that I couldn't solve. I use it for short term restores of the OS, after an install that either went bad or I changed my mind and didn't want something.

Regards - Charles

 

I think System Restore works very well for what it was designed to do.

General Advice for System Restore

Do not enable SR on drives or partitions that have no OS.

Set slider midway to reduce amount of points made. SR points are cumalative, and a corrupt one will damage ones created afterwards. The fewer RPs the better, on a healthy system.

SR does not affect email and data files. It works on Windows System Files and a few .exes It will not recover the file you deleted, and it will announce it was unable to do anything, if it doesn't detect any changes in monitored files between the present and the date you selected to restore to. That doesn't mean it isn't working, it only means SR detected NO CHANGES.

SR is not a substitute for spyware/adware/malware removal. It can be a tool in the process, but it was never designed or intended to function as an all purpose cleaner-upper. During a clean up, it is wise to delete all SR points (toggle it on and off again in "System" in the Control Panel to erase existing RPs) in case malware is lurking in the SR files.

SR is not a substitute for an appropriate back up plan. If you have anything on your computer right now that would cause you anxiety to lose, then your back up strategy is insufficient.

SR is supposed to make regular Restore Points on its own. I have never had any problems on my own computers, or those I've worked on, with the frequency of SR, but others on this BBS that I respect have reported problems with their systems not creating RPs automatically. That has not been my experience. My computer makes a restore point every day, and the more sophisticated software installs trigger an RP, too.

FROM MS

Johanna

 

I have only had to use SR a few times. Mostly for minor issues such registry rollbacks, or when I started getting odd behaviors such as a blank msinfo pane. These were, for the most part, tied into a MS update/upset. Going back in time helped to track or pin the problem down. SR worked very well (for myself) used in this manner and gave me no problems. I have gone backwards and forwards in points. Have I been courting disaster? Possibly, but so far so good....

While I don't solely depend on it. I still have it enabled as it is handy to use and has worked when used in minor ways such as I have done. I do clear these points periodically when I feel the older restores are not or will not be useful. Also after running adware/spybot/cwshredder if any detections or cleanup/changes were made those older restore points were also zapped. This may account for the, thusfar, nonproblematic SR usage. I have not made any modifications to the SR defaults by tweaking it out with any preference modifications. I just haven't felt the need since as previously stated it has worked well as is. Perhaps when space becomes a problem, or future usuage becomes sporadic, I will do so.

I have had no reason to call on this tool for any major upset such as not being able to get into my system. It hasn't been put through the paces. Based on this, not much weight should be given to my vote. For what I have used it for, it has worked as it should without a problem.

 

Sometime it has worked, sometimes not. I find it worth using. If it doesn't help you can alway undo the restore. The default 10% of drive size reserved for it is rediculous. somewhere around 400MB -1GB is more than enough for any situation. Even as low as 200MB has worked well for me.

It's a pain having to clean up the Program Files folder after some restores though. When some later installed programmes leave a duplicate folder behind designated by a (2) after the folder name.

 

Since installing my new OS (Windows XP Home Edition SP1) in August 2004 (and with SP2 now safely ensconced within) I have 'attempted' to use System Restore about 10-15 times. And not ONCE, not one single time, did it function properly!! It certainly could be due to incorrect operation by me but I'm reasonably saavy/computer literate and do not experience these failures/problems with other utilities/processes/operations etc.

I recently d/l'd NTBackup (from the original Windows XP Home Edition Installation CD) and find it much more reliable/effective!

YMMV.

 

I've used it before. But it's bloated junk. I use real imaging. It's QUICKER and BETTER.

 

I'm surprised that Newt hasn't weighed in with why he uses GoBack, rather than SR.

I use SR from time to time, but find that it doesn't always solve whatever problem I'm having. I think that a botched program installation (my usual reason for resorting to SR) can be better handled by editing the registry (RegSeeker has become my utility of choice) to remove all references to the offending program, and then removing any files/folders it may have placed on the computer.

I wonder if the SR problems Johanna mentions may be explained by the highlighted section of the quote from Microsoft. It's hard to believe that, in this day and age of huge hard drives, anyone would have so little space on their system drive but, I suppose, anything is possible.

I think it's worth mentioning that filelist.xml is a hidden file, and won't normally be seen by those who have Hide protected operating system files (Recommended) checked on the View tab in Folder Options. An easy way to view the file is to open Start > Run... and enter either

%windir%\system32\restore\Filelist.xml​

or

c:\windows\system32\restore\filelist.xml
​

It should open in your designated browser.

If you preface the string with Notepad the file will open in Notepad, rather than your browser.

 

Jim - I was keeping with the topic which is use vs. non-use of SR rather than a general question of how we do disaster recovery.

 

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

edit note: to keep from hijacking this poll thread, I'll insert a comment here. Newt

LOL @ JSS3rd's 'mea culpa' comments.

Newt

 

I've used it (apparently like the majority) and found it to be useful, easy to use and set things perfectly straight for me... thank Heavens!

 

Oh gawd! It's bad enough that I have to edit my own posts, but now Newt is editing them, too!

The question asked in the poll question was, simply, "Have you used System Restore?" The choices, as I recall, were, "Yes" and "No ".

It doesn't seem right, however, that the postings in the thread should be limited to why the poster chose "Yes" or "No" on SR. Instead, he/she should be able to suggest other recovery options, and explain why he/she uses them, as opposed to SR. This forum is supposed to be a learning tool, after all. I know that Newt swears by GoBack, while I swear at it. I've used it, and found it to be a royal PITA. As the saying goes, "one man's meat is another man's poison ".

Newt, I tremble, awaiting your response!

 

Jim - I felt like the 'I use 3rd party stuff' was fine for getting the percentages on the poll.

And I do like GoBack. The only time it has ever failed to do the job for me is when I got stupid and didn't spot a problem until I had no good point to go back to. I loaded an XP SP2 beta and then just didn't test things well enough. Found a problem that I couldn't fix but Beta versions are like that.

I keep data files I'm real fond of burned to CD but usually when I invite a nasty in and find out I'm not as well protected as I thought, reboot, spacebar, pick a GoBack restore point and I'm back in business. However, if I were more dependent on my PC (business, student with important documents and deadlines, etc.) I'd opt to do additional safeguards by getting an image burning app and keeping a current image somewhere safe.

I'm well aware that a hardware failure could wipe me out. If so, OK. I have my slipstreamed XP/SP2 CD, all my apps on CD, and no problems restaging the PC if needed. Then just a matter of buying new hardware and spending a day setting things back up.

As several folks on here are fond of saying (and I agree), YMMV.

 

Newt ...

I saw your reply at 0-dark-thirty, just before shutting down last night (this morning, that is) and heading for bed, but was too tired to respond.

You're right ... there were more choices than, simply, "Yes" and "No ", and my vote will be found on the blue line.

I know you like GoBack, but it proved to be more trouble than it was worth for me. I had it installed on PatriCia (my laptop) for awhile, as I had no other reliable backup system, but never could get it to work correctly, even with all kinds of help from Roxio's techies. (I notice that GoBack is now another piece of Symantec's constantly growing empire.)

Last week, though, I gave myself a couple of early Christmas presents ... I installed a WD "Scorpio" 80GB HDD in PatriCia and bought an Iomega 80GB USB external HDD (which came with both Ghost 2003 and Iomega Automatic Backup), so now both PatriCia and PrisCilla (the desktop, which uses Drive Image 7) get backed up regularly.

I've seen YMMV on the BBS, but can only come up with "Yes, My Mother Voted ". In fact, as a good Republican, she did it several times!

 

YMMV = your mileage may very