system restore and Dummies

[AlexY]

I have a question about system restore; an friend of mine brought his
computer to me so that I could help him clean it up. He was running very
slow. Let me mention, too, that he apparently has never read anything
concerning "computer maintenance"; he has never defragged, etc. At that time
he was running with 40% disk space. He didn't want to reinstall as I think
he should have. Plus his particular brand didn't have any restore disks (I
dont need to go into that tirade). I cleaned it and recovered space (had 2
viruses, ALOT of spyware, obsolete games, just junk out the yingyang, etc.)
and he ended up with 65% percent free space. Then Dummy goes home with the
computer and decides he doesn't like one of the spyware programs I installed
and instead of uninstalling, Dummy does a system restore. After I told him
how very stupid that was THEN Dummy tells me he tried to restore it back to
where he was after leaving here. And that didn't work, so Stupid then does
another restore. Now he has 5% disk space (actually he really has 1% because
the system is using 4% for restore). By the way, he knows I now call him
these names, these are among the better names I have for him at this point.

I couldn't believe it. Among other things I won't say in the newsgroup
here, I told him that he needed to start completely over and reinstall the
whole system. And that would be the end of this but then I became curious
about his remaining 1% disk space; my question is: along with things system
restore "restored", did system restore take up the remaining space with
copies or something? I was just wondering, I don't know alot about restore,
but I do know maintenance (had to get one more jab at him in here).

Thanks alot,

Alex

 

[Alex Nichol]

I couldn't believe it. Among other things I won't say in the newsgroup
here, I told him that he needed to start completely over and reinstall the
whole system. And that would be the end of this but then I became curious
about his remaining 1% disk space; my question is: along with things system
restore "restored", did system restore take up the remaining space with
copies or something?

Probably yes. When you restore it effectively makes another restore
point so as to be able to unwind what you just did. It sounds as if he
has these chasing their tails into a Gordian knot

 

[alex]

Probably yes. When you restore it effectively makes another restore
point so as to be able to unwind what you just did. It sounds as if he
has these chasing their tails into a Gordian knot

Thanks, I figured this. I told him the best thing to do is "Start" Shut
Down" and never attempt to run a computer again, he.

AlexY