system restore nightmares in vista

[Guest]

i'm using vista home basic. twice now restore points that i have made just
the day before have vanished from my pc. yesterday i made two restore points.
today i open up system restore to create a new one, and get the message "no
system restore points have been created on my hard disk". so frustrating. i'm
pretty certain i'm not doing any of the things that microsoft says restricts
system restore's capacity. in system protection all available disks are
ticked. i've had to reformatt my (fairly new) pc once because i had trouble
with a dodgy program. i really need my system restore to work. bah.

 

[Guest]

i've had the same problem with home premium tried to use system restore when
my windows explorer refused to work and repeatedly closed down.tried to
restore to 24hours earlier but kept getting error during restore in the end i
had to do a clean install from my partition which takes forever.i have been
told that system restore works from the backups you make (dont know if this
is correct or not)but if you dont make a full backup and update it regular
then restore doesnt have anything to work with (would be helpfull if some one
with more knowledge than me could clarify this) as yet i havnt done a full
backup because drive d (partion) only has a gig of space left and the last
time i tried it backup refused to update due to lack of disc space and i dont
see the point of backing up to drive c i would sooner use dvd's untill i have
a better understanding

 

[Charles W Davis]

Your drive D is probably a Restore partition on your sole hard drive. You
shouldn't use it for any purpose. Many new computers are shipped this way.
The only safe method is to back up to an external hard drive, a second hard
drive that you install, or the DVDs as you suggested.

I have no knowledge of whether one must perform a backup prior to being able
to do a system restore. I'll leave that for someone else to answer

 

[gls858]

i'm using vista home basic. twice now restore points that i have made just
the day before have vanished from my pc. yesterday i made two restore points.
today i open up system restore to create a new one, and get the message "no
system restore points have been created on my hard disk". so frustrating. i'm
pretty certain i'm not doing any of the things that microsoft says restricts
system restore's capacity. in system protection all available disks are
ticked. i've had to reformatt my (fairly new) pc once because i had trouble
with a dodgy program. i really need my system restore to work. bah.

Do yourself a favor and get a program like Acronis True Image. I think
I saw it on Amazon for around $35 dollars. Well worth the money.
System restore is notoriously flaky. I wouldn't depend on it at all for
anything important.

gls858