How Do I Turn Off ASR's?

[Fred Morrison]

How can I turn off the creation of Automatic System Recovery points in XP
Pro (SP2) when a new driver is installed?

I was at a recent cancer survivors conference and found my laptop being
pressed into emergency service when the person who was supposed to supply a
latop for PowerPoint presentations forgot his A/C adapter. My laptop only
had USB connection capabilities to the InFocus projector, so we go the right
driver (.sys, .inf files) from the InFocus web site (thanks to the hotel's
generosity to provide free wireless internet access for the day) and
proceeded to let the New Hardware wizard try to install it. It immediately
insisted on taking an Automatic System Recovery but seemed to stall. I
waited patiently for about 10 minutes for it to create the ASR, but when it
made no further progress (no disk light activity), I killed the install
attempt and tried to find a place in Control Panel where I could turn off
automatic creation of ASR's, but to no avail. 30 minutes later, we finally
rented a laptop from the hotel that had a direct external monitor connector
and the doctors and other presenters were able to proceed.

Afterwards, I searched my April 2005 MSDN to see if there was a way to turn
this "feature" off, either permanently, or temporarily, but found nothing.

To save me this emabarrassment in the future, I'd like to know how to turn
off automatic ASR's and just install the driver (.inf, .sys) when the Found
New Hardware wizard kicks in.

 

[Grant Robertson]

How can I turn off the creation of Automatic System Recovery points in XP
Pro (SP2) when a new driver is installed?

I think your difficulty stems from the fact that you are confusing
Automatic System Recovery (ASR) with System Restore. ASR despite it's
name is something you have to do manually using the Backup utility. It
creates a backup file and a floppy disk that enables a full restore from
scratch if necessary. To restore the PC you would boot off the install CD
and choose the ASR option at the appropriate point.

System Restore is the thing that occurs automatically every time you
install software. I am not positive if it always runs when you install a
driver. I think Driver Rollback (a separate feature) takes care of that
instead. Anyway, you can turn off System Restore by right-clicking on My
Computer and choosing Properties. There you will see the System Restore
tab and everything from there should be obvious to you. Keep in mind that
turning off System Restore also deletes any stored restore points. So if
you turn it off you will not be able to go back to any previous restore
points should something go wrong.

However, if the newly installed driver causes a problem you could still
use Driver Rollback or just delete the offending driver if necessary.

 

[Robert Moir]

How can I turn off the creation of Automatic System Recovery points
in XP Pro (SP2) when a new driver is installed?

To turn off System Restore
Open System Properties, then system restore tab.
Ensure that the Turn off System Restore check box is selected.

What you described is not typical behaviour for installing a driver, whether
system restore is enabled or not.

As such, the problem may lie elsewhere (e.g. poorly written drivers, weird
config issues), have you checked the event logs and things like that to
ensure that system restore is guilty rather than just having the bad luck to
be on-screen when something odd happened?

--

 

[Fred Morrison]

There is no System Restore tab on my Windows XP SP2 laptop under Properties.
Did Service Pack 2 eliminate that tab?

 

[Fred Morrison]

My Computer/Properties/System Properties has only these six tabs:

General, Computer Name, Hardware, Advanced, Automatic Updates, Remote

There is no System Restore tab.