Testing for Corrupted System Restore Points

It's my understanding (from reading this board) that once an SR point is corrupted, so are all subsequent points until you turn SR off/on. But how can you tell beforehand that the restore points have become corrupted? It seems like when you find out, it's too late. Is there a simple test procedure that one should use occasionally just to make sure all is OK? Thnx

 

By default, I think XP keeps SR points for 90 days. If you reduce the amount of space allocated to System Restore, it will keep less, and the oldest are deleted as the new ones are added. I can't think of when I'd want to go back more than a week at the most- SR is useful for bad software or hardware installs/ uninstalls, and not much else, and you usually do know right away if you have a problem. It's not a good tool for depending on a real "system restore" with data and software intact. For that, you are better off using a Drive Imaging program like Ghost. A search on the board will provide you with a ton of info on the available software alternatives, and their pros and cons.

On a good day, when my computer is running well, after I'm done with my regular "maintenance ", you know, scans like Spybot & AdAware, my weekly Norton scan, a defrag etc, I create a brand new Known Good Restore Point. Then, I delete all SR points except that one.

Start> All Programs> Accessories > System Tools > Disk Clean up

"Okay" the drive your SR points live on, Windows quickly calculates, then click the "More Options" tab. On the bottom is the option to delete all but the last SR point. Click.

HTH
Johanna

 

Johanna: "I create a brand new Known Good Restore Point "....how do you know it's good? Just the fact that it got created doesn't mean it's good, does it? It would seem that if I was desperate, I'll go back several weeks if necessary; I do use Drive Image several times a month, but that's for a disaster....I've had good luck with SR, and it's certainly easy to use. Thnx

 

Hi all,
Sorry I can't help with the corruption question, but the following may be of interest:

It is possible to limit the amount of space reserved for system restore, but it is also possible to control the periodicity for establishing restore points, and how long each created point is stored.

In the registry key HKLM\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\SystemRestore the following changes can be made if needed.
The value RPGlobalInterval defaults to 86,400 seconds (24 hours) Changing this figure to 43,200 will ccause two restore points to be made each day, to 259,000 if you want restore points to be made every three days.
The value RPLifeInterval defaults to 7,776,000 seconds (90 days), changing it to 2,592,000 seconds is equivalent to a life of 30 days, which is ample for most of us I think.

Roger

 

What good would that do if you had a corrupt SR point? If you were desperate, wouldn't you just use your Drive Image or reinstall? I would. I can't think of a time when going back more than a week would have helped with a problem SR could fix, but we might use our computers differently.

And, no, I have no idea if that "new" point is good, any more than I know if any subsequent ones are, but at least I know all possibly corrupted other SR points are gone.

What kinds of problems are you having that you need to use SR so frequently?

Johanna

 

J......I don't use it that often, I guess I've had 3 or 4 MS security updates in the past 18 months that fouled up my system somehow....and SR always fixed things without a lot of effort.

 

Hi Steve,

It does work that way - Mine is set at 3% 1075 MB on XP's 40 gig drive.


chrisw,

A way to test Restore: http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=32095

Regards - Charles

 

Charles.....I had seen that, and even printed it out for posterity. But I was hoping someone knew of something even easier. By the way, where did you learn about that?

 

Hi Chris,

I think that's easy enough, just create a point, move one file, and restore - less than 5 minutes. I wrote that in the other thread in the context of having to delete all the points, but that's not necessary in your case.

I've used SR in ME and in XP long enough to test that for myself - it's implicit in the way SR works, especially once you know what file extensions are being monitored.

Regards - Charles