Resolved How can I repair system restore

Tried restoring Toshiba laptop A25-S207 running windows xp pro. But to every restore point I chose, it said system can not be restored to that point, choose another restore point. I tried them all the way back to early last month and it will not restore. Any way to repair this problem aside from reinstalling windows?
Thanks in advance to your replies.

 

Thanks Evan Omo, I will give it a try.

 

Hold On there ...............

It may already be too late but if you are trying to use system restore then it would be logical to speculate that you have some kind of problem you are trying to fix. If you remove all of your restore points ( I know you said none are working right now) then you obviously will have no restore points available to you to fix whatever it was you are trying to fix.

A much better solution would be to reduce the amount of hard drive space dedicated to restore points. Then reboot and then increase the space back to the maximum allowable. Quite often, this will cure problems with System Restore. Please try this before you follow the previous advice from Evan Omo.

Evan Omo - nothing wrong with what you suggested but it will forever kill the ability to get back to a previous restore point and there has to be a reason (problem) or dleonr wouldn't have been trying to use System Restore.



edit: Evan Omo - I reread your post and note that you did not advise to kill all old restore points. The fix I proposed will also kill the oldest but leave considerably more old restore points available if it is successful.

 

Thanks for responding to the post. But like you said, I already did what Evan Omo said to do. But I will copy and paste your advice. Yes I was having a problem and it had to do with my touchpad. The pointer was not moving freely and it would stick every now and then. I reinstalled the drivers and it would still happen, so I though, perhaps restoring to when I think it was working properly would help, that is when I realized that the restore points were not working. I also tried to delete the drivers from device manager, but I did not see the device noted in the device manager list, only as PS mouse. I don't know what is going on, but the touchpad is working a little better now, not 100% but close to it. Maybe the drivers I installed were not the correct one. I am at a lost right now. I guess with time I will figure it out.

Thanks for all the help from you guys and this site.

 

Another Reason System Restore might not work

This is probably unrelated to the problem at hand, but I have found out that some of my system restore points have worked, and others have not, giving the same message you described.

What I finally determined is that the automatic system restore points that run overnight will only work if there is an adminstrative account open on the computer when it runs. If you only have a power user account logged, it will create a system restore point, but when you try to run it, it gives the error message.

I determined this because on Sundays I use an administrative account to run an overnight backup. When I was trying to do a system restore, only the ones that had been created on Sundays worked.

 

FWIW I had a similar problem on XP and other users told me that Norton Anti-Virus/System Works will cause the Restore to fail like you stated. When I removed System Works and reloaded it WITHOUT the AV, Restore worked fine. I then added AVG virus and everything was fine.

 

I found System Restore not working last month. It turned out to be caused by replacing a hard drive with a new larger one. System Restore was "confused" by my removal of the restore information that had been placed on the old drive.

I followed a Google search recommended sequence:

1. Go to the System Restore tab of My Computer properties and turn it off.
2. Restart Windows.
3. Turn System Restore back on.

I had no problem with losing the restore points, because the new drives were updated from current backups.

 

That should be highlighted, many people in this situation may have a problem losing all the restore points.

 

System Restore

I found when using Windows XP none of my restore points would work.
I read an artical on Windows tips and tricks, by booting into safe mode and then use the restore points i had no trouble restoring my system. I don't remember on which site I read this tip but it was good for me, you may want to give this a try and see if this will work for you.

 

Ok folks, my system restore is working fine now. I did what Evan Omo said and it is now working fine. what caused it to malfunction I don't know. But it is working now. I only tried rolling it back because I have been having some terrible problems with my touchpad put rolling back did not help much.