Restore made things worse

[Guest]

My sister-in-law has been having problems with her AOl software for the past
couple of months so my brother decided to do a restore point back to the
begining of December before all the problems started. This was after
uninstalling/reinstalling AOL and trying all the other recommended fixes.
Anyway, the restore point really messed things up. She can log into Windows
XP Home and gets a blank desktop (can only see her wallpaper), no Start
button, no Task bar, no icons on the desktop and if she right clicks on her
desktop nothing happens, and basically can't appear to do anything. They
tried to us the XP Home disk to run a Repair but it just sent them to a
c:\windows dos prompt. Any suggestions?

 

[Malke]

My sister-in-law has been having problems with her AOl software for the past
couple of months so my brother decided to do a restore point back to the
begining of December before all the problems started. This was after
uninstalling/reinstalling AOL and trying all the other recommended fixes.
Anyway, the restore point really messed things up. She can log into Windows
XP Home and gets a blank desktop (can only see her wallpaper), no Start
button, no Task bar, no icons on the desktop and if she right clicks on her
desktop nothing happens, and basically can't appear to do anything. They
tried to us the XP Home disk to run a Repair but it just sent them to a
c:\windows dos prompt. Any suggestions?

System Restore is really only for short-term rollbacks. At this point,
I'd just back up her data and clean-install Windows.

http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html - Clean Install How-To
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Reinstalling_Windows -
What you will need on-hand


Malke

 

[db]

at the desktop do
a ctrl alt delete
and run/start
explorer.exe

if this works, then the
registry needs some help...

- db
My sister-in-law has been having problems with her AOl software for the past
couple of months so my brother decided to do a restore point back to the
begining of December before all the problems started. This was after
uninstalling/reinstalling AOL and trying all the other recommended fixes.
Anyway, the restore point really messed things up. She can log into Windows
XP Home and gets a blank desktop (can only see her wallpaper), no Start
button, no Task bar, no icons on the desktop and if she right clicks on her
desktop nothing happens, and basically can't appear to do anything. They
tried to us the XP Home disk to run a Repair but it just sent them to a
c:\windows dos prompt. Any suggestions?

 

[Bert Kinney]

Hi,

Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to launch Task Manager. Click File - New Task (Run...)
and enter the following command then click OK.

%systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe

If this opens System Restore choose to UNDO the last restore.
Running System Restore from Safe Mode is another option.

All About System Restore in WinXP
http://bertk.mvps.org/index.html

Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member: http://dts-l.org

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

My sister-in-law has been having problems with her AOl software for
the past couple of months so my brother decided to do a restore point
back to the begining of December before all the problems started.
This was after uninstalling/reinstalling AOL and trying all the other
recommended fixes. Anyway, the restore point really messed things up.

Not a surprise. System restore is an excellent tool for reverting the system
to a state it was in a few days, or at most a week or two, ago. If you go
back further than that, you are very likely to get things out of synch with
each other and exacerbate problems, rather than solve them. The beginning of
December is almost three months ago--*way* too far back to go.

At this point, the best alternative is probably a clean reinstallation of
Windows.

 

[Bill Sharpe]

Malke wrote:

System Restore is really only for short-term rollbacks. At this point,
I'd just back up her data and clean-install Windows.

I'd certainly agree with that. I restored a friend's computer to
something like three weeks back. That solved his immediate problem but
introduced so many other problems that I undid the restoration and took
another approach to solving the original problem.

The final resolution involved re-installing XP.

Bill

 

[Bert Kinney]

Hi Bill,

Take a look at these two tips.
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/tips.html#BeforeRunningSR

Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member: http://dts-l.org

 

[Bill Sharpe]

Hi Bill,

Take a look at these two tips.
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/tips.html#BeforeRunningSR

Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member: http://dts-l.org

Thanks for the tips, Bert.

As I said, this was a friend's computer. I had no idea what he had
installed in the previous three weeks other than his grand-daughter
installing MS Messenger, which I did delete. After the restore the
computer ran very slowly. I undid my restore operation and computer ran
faster but his loss of HP all-in-one printer access occurred again. He
also had problems with AOL access. Since I quit using AOL about ten
years ago I couldn't help him with that. And apparently neither could AOL.

Eventually he called in a pro repair shop who reinstalled Windows for
him and all seems well.

My point was that I agree that system restore can be problematic the
further back in time you go.

Bill

 

[Bert Kinney]

Hi Bill,

Make sure the aol user has the aol Computer check option turned off. This
can bring a system to it's knees in performance.

It sounds like he took the system to a reinstall shop, not a repair shop...

Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member: http://dts-l.org