System Restore After Corrupt Registry

[BK]

I'm in a situation where I booted up my PC this morning and the registry
decided to not work. Last Known Good did the same thing. So I threw in the
XP Install disk and went to the recovery console and copied my registry
files from the windows\repair folder to the windows\system32\config folder
like the Microsoft KB says. Well the problem with this is that the files in
the repair folder are from when I initially installed XP so none of my apps
or settings are there. Now isn't System Restore supposed to be cool and
neat so that I can essentially restore my computer back to the way it was at
a given time? I go to the System Restore App and the only restore point is
from this morning. Now here's the thing. I'm not 100% sure that the System
Restore setting was activated. I guess my question is, if System Restore
was active would it still show up in the the System Restore program even if
I restore registry files from way back? Or does it make entries into the
registry so that a restore point made after the registry file date won't
show up. Would there be anyway to get at it? Basically...am I SOL?

TIA,
Bill

 

[BK]

Ahhh...ok...I see. Well it seems like my computer was not set to do a
system restore. So it does look like I'm out of luck. There's no
fancy, free and magical product out there (read: magic pill) to fix up a
bad registry? Well at least I still have my start menu that can
remind me as to what I need to reinstall. *makes sure that system
restore is on*

So what would be the reasoning for turning off the system restore other
than perhaps low disk space or that you're using another product to
accomplish the same thing? Is there some sort of security implication?
Anything else?

Thanks again,
Bill

 

[GSV Three Minds in a Can]

Ahhh...ok...I see. Well it seems like my computer was not set to do a
system restore. So it does look like I'm out of luck. There's no
fancy, free and magical product out there (read: magic pill) to fix up
a bad registry? Well at least I still have my start menu that can
remind me as to what I need to reinstall. *makes sure that system
restore is on*

So what would be the reasoning for turning off the system restore other
than perhaps low disk space or that you're using another product to
accomplish the same thing? Is there some sort of security implication?
Anything else?

<snip>

No, leave it on unless you have another/better system to provide same
ability. Sadly it does sometimes turn itself off, whinging about 'need
200 MB of free space', even though there is 20GB of free space
available. Usually it turns back on again, but this can cause problems.
MS will presumably fix this (known bug) sometime.

Oh, and it only restores system files .. so for user data you need
another backup, and there's no point having it switched on for
drives/volumes which are purely data - just a waste of time/space.