Discussing System Restore

For a long time now I've been seeing posts where people have problems and it's recommended they try system restore. The person with the problem then posts back and says they can't restore to a previous date because when they try they get a message that the restore was unsuccessful blah, blah ,blah (sorry, I'm kind of lazy tonight) . Anyway, often it's recommended that they reduce the amount of space used by system restore from the default of 12% to a lower figure in order to make room for the restore. It's my contention that this does nothing but delete the older restore points and won't make room for SR to start workng again. In short, in order for SR to work you don't need room within that default 12% for the restore to occur. Think about it. MS isn't perfect but I have a hard time believing that they'd goof to the point that they'd let the restore points fill up to the point that there wasn't any room for the restore thus rendering SR useless. Besides that, if you reduce it to, let's say 6%, it'll still be full, using 6% of the drive.

I have mine set to the default 12% of the drive. It's full all the time. That's what it's supposed to do. Fill the allocated space and then begin deleting the old ones. The drive that I have windows installed on is only 4GB's in size. The system restore files I have now total 490MB's. There's only seven days worth of them and every day the oldest one gets deleted. It's full all the time and yet whenever I've used system restore, it's always worked just just as it's supposed to. My guess is that everyone's is full all the time just by the very nature of how it works (unless it's a new installation). I don't think I've ever seen a case where reducing the amount of space allocated for SR solved the "cannot restore" problem.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not questioning anybody's wisdom or anything like that but from what I've experienced and from just my own thoughts on how this all works, why is this recommended? Go ahead, fire away. I've got a bucket of water handy to put out the flames.

 

Interesting topic Zander. I can't contribute directly since I run Go-back and have SR turned off but your experience vs. the many folks who say it hasn't worked for them does make me wonder.

My first guess would be that they were doing something wrong except that I can't figure out what you can "do wrong" with SR.

 

Like Newt, I use GoBack and leave SR off. However, I think what has been said means that there is not ample DRIVE space for SR to do its work and reducing the space allocated to SR will free up some/same. Also reducing the Paging File and disabling Hibernate would help along that line.

If that doesn't fit, don't wear it.

 

Hi Zander,

I don't know why that works specifically, but it seems to. I do think it has something to do with the size of the operation, meaning that let's say for the sake of illustration, a restore after installing SP2 (huge) back to a point prior to SP2 wouldn't work, but a restore prior to a software install would.

I've experienced that on both XP and before on WinMe. I've suggested this a number of times, and seems to work. What the actual problem is, I don't know. It comes down to the OS not handling the operation well if the size of the "current" state it has to store is too big. What that "too big" is - ?

Besides that, if you reduce it to, let's say 6%, it'll still be full, using 6% of the drive.
I wrote the original instructions in which I wrote reduce to 6% and than expand back to 12%. I think there was a post in which the expand back to 12% was left out.

Regards - Charles

 

You guess wrong. I only have ONE ( or no more than two anyway ) system restore points.

Windows itslef never seems to make one on it own. Unless I install something then it does. But by that time it is too late because I had already made one.

I have just one question.

What good is a seven day old restore point ? Especially if you have done any house cleaning ( virus, SpyWare, add remove software etc. )

Two days ago I spent a couple of hours cleaning up this machine from no longer used ( or not working ) software. Moved a few thing from C:\ to E:\

I left RPs as they were till this afternoon. Everything is working Ok so I shut down and restarted System Restore. Now I have a Restore Point the reflects the system AS IT IS. NOT as it WAS

I do the same thing with the RB00x.cab files in 98.

I think Restore Points have to be handled BY THE USER according to what he has done with the machine.

I believe ( very strongly ) that it is very much a case of " One size does not fit all. "

Another thought.

If I change Video, Printer, Audio OR ANY drivers WHY do I want to keep YESTERDAYS backup once I find all is going to be OK.

My bottom Line.

I DO NOT wait for Windows ( never have and never will ) to do it. I do it myself to make sure it has been done. And then DOUBLE check myself.

BillyBob

 

I hear ya BillyBob but I tend to disagree with ya. For me it's not a problem to keep 7 days worth of restore points. 7 days isn't a heck of a lot. Sometimes it takes a few days to notice a problem caused by something you install. Yesterdays restore point is no good to me if the problem I'm experiencing was caused by something I installed 2, 3, or 4 days ago. I realize that a cleaning a virus would require the removal of the restore points so that's not a problem for me. Viruses have been virtually non existent now for about 5 or 6 years in my house so it's not a big concern to me. If I were to somehow acquire a bug of some sort I'd clean it and delete my restore points. 7 days isn't that long a time that I can't remember what I've done since. If I installed something 6 days ago and didn't want it to be removed I'll not go back that far if I don't have to. Even if I were to go back to that day and remove something that I need to put back, IMO, reinstalling a program or two beats spending hours or even days to try to correct a problem of some sort.

I'm not saying you're wrong here. It's the "different strokes" thing ya know. I think it's pointless to have a months worth of restore points but 7 days worth suits me just fine.

Charles

To be honest, I know that's what's usually suggested but I goofed and failed to include it in my post. You may be right but as I said, I can't remember a time it worked. To me it just doesn't seem to make any sense. Letting SR fill to the point that it no longer has room for itself to do what it's supposed to do when needed would be a major blunder on MS's part. As I said before, I have a hard time believing they would do something like that. I could be wrong but my guess is that it copies things to the temp dir or something like that and does the restore from there. If it has worked for you in the past I guess I shouldn't really be arguing the point here. After all, everything I'm saying is just pure theories on my part. But, it does make for a pretty good discussion.

Guess I'll spend some time trying to find out about this. Why? Just because it's something I don't know and I want to know.

 

Hi Zander,

Not only worked for me, but it seems for others as well - do a search for System Restore w/ my user name in XP.

Regards - Charles

 

Zander

What you write somewhat agrees with me by saying roughly;

" System Restore is something that can be ( or must be (your call) ) in a way that works best for the user. "

Right now 7 days ( from today ) might be OK. But 7 ( even 3 ) days BACK would KILL ME. I made too many changes. Especially moving stuff from one drive to the other.

I only have SR setup for the C: drive. And if I did a System Restore I would ( or may ) have a couple of programs that would not ( or at least may not run properly ) run because of changes to the registry. Three days ago would not reflect the changes. Maybe even the shortcut on the desktop might be wrong.

And the only reason I had to move it was because I got in a hurry when it was installed in the first place. It should have gone to D: or E: and not C:

You say it and I 100% agree with you. " I know what I have done. "

BillyBob

 

I read and smile. It is to wonder what value SR has if you are afraid to use it on many occasions. I hate programs like that. They offer help but they have so many pitfalls. It reminds me of the way SFC / SCANNOW used to work before XP. It offered to replace your damaged or missing files and then proceeded to hose your entire system structure. Just simply amazing how some of these "cures" work.

I don't mean to be overly harsh on MS but I must say SR leaves me unimpressed. I tried my best to like it. After many disappointments, I now won't touch it with a barge pole. There are much better ways to roll the system back without fear of destroying it, not knowing what the results will be or having your efforts be denied. I strongly advise anyone to check into the alternatives. Get something that you can know how it will affect the system and trust that it will work properly. I hate making excuses and repairs on things that should work and don't.

 

well, i took the search challenge and went back through a bunch of posts. Dont ask me how, but this slider move to 6 reboot trick has worked many a time in the past. Very interesting. I had no idea.

I wasnt able to discern a trend of the disk being overly full. I can't imagine why else this trick would work though.

 

Hi All
Reading this I checked my SR, It goes back 3 months, March 1st back to Dec. 1st. I have not created any check points myself, everyday of the month is set except 1 day from each month.
Why would one day be left clean and all the others set? (so there is not a storage problem?...ie...full)
I have had this computer sense Sept. so everything from Dec. back has been deleted by SR.

I don't see anywhere that I can set the SR for only 7 days or 14 days or whatever.
I have heard you talk about going back to far and that it may not work, I have never tried and have only used SR maybe 3 times in the past and then only going back about a week.

Is the SR check points loaded into the recover partition ie... my D drive? or are they stored on C: somewhere?
I would guess that if it was on my recovery partition then any problems would just be loaded again if I had to do a recovery.

Geri

 

Hypethetical Question for anybody.

If I had SR points for say 4 days ago.

Today there were several Windows Critical Updates available and I installed them.

Now re: yesterdays RP.
Would it or would it not possibly be damaging to the system if used ?

I say YES it would.

IF not real damaging it sure would remove all of the updates.

I am not saying that it should be removed ASAP but certainly after a day or two if things go well.

BillyBob

 

That could well have been me who left it out in a recent post. First read about that one here and its worked for me on a couple of problem machines. Thanks Charlesvar.

Personally, I don't rely on System Restore but have had occasion to use it on other's machines with good results in most cases. Not always, but most.

Have used SR on my own systems more than once but only have my system drives turned on. My safety net is still imaging with Ghost and data backups with Karen's Replicator. Have also been experimenting with Vice-Versa Pro and am quite pleased with this tool too.

 

BillyBob
Other then taking up disk space, why do you have to remove them?

It looks like I'm useing 1.5 Mb of space on restore points, I have way over that on attachments that I have saved from emails.

So 1.5 Mb is not much space.

Geri

 

All well and good. But don't you still need to make sure they are up to date as you make changes to the system ?

BillyBob

 

Disk space is not my concern. Keeping the Restore Points up to date with the rest of the system is.

Again. I make changes today that I want permanent and all is working well any RP from several days ago is OUT OF DATE.

See my reply about Windows Updates.

BillyBob

 

OK
I looked again, I'm useing about 17 Mb for System restore
Sorry
I would drop this back to 1 month if I knew how. not 3 months.
Geri

 

Geri

If you have that many Restore points going back that far and you were to use one of them you could be LOSING a lot of changes you have made.

Software may quit working. Or be gone altogether.

Something that you removed could be put back.

BillyBob

 

BillyBob
This Microsoft page says this...
"System Restore works a lot like the Undo command in Microsoft Word. You can use System Restore to remove any system changes that were made since the last time you remember your computer working correctly. System Restore does not affect your personal data files (such as Microsoft Word documents, browsing history, drawings, favorites, or e–mail) so you won't lose changes made to these files. "

Microsoft SR

So Windows updates would be removed
Geri

 

Yes Sir - I don't think I'm ever going to lose my data (maybe a days worth) or must keep files because I'm doing daily backups to another drive. But any software or system changes made since my last image are going to be good-bye, long gone, so long or adios in the event of a catastrophic failure.

With Vice-Versa, one can run synchronized incremental backups to another machine every time a file is opened or changed or a new file added. Still a rookie with this application but its pretty impressive software.