System restore not working

M

Matty

I upgraded from WinXP Home SP2 to WinXP Pro SP2.
Just before I upgraded, I created a restore point. So, up to that time I
know System restore was working.

After upgrading,
- when I click on System Restore in the Control Panel, it says "System
restore has been turned off by group pollicy. To turn on ST, contact your
system admin."

When I right click on My Computer to get to System Properties, there is no
System Restore tab.

When I go to Services - System Restore Service, the status says "stopped".
I then select either Auto, Manual and then click Start. In both cases, I
get "Could not start the SR Service service on Local Computer. Error 5:
Access is denied."

On some message boards, they suggest re-installing sr.inf. So I went into
Windows/inf, right clicked on sr.inf and chose install. It went through the
motion of installing but after restarting, SR still isn't working I still
get the same error messages.

How do I get my SR to work again?
 
L

Lem

Matty said:
I upgraded from WinXP Home SP2 to WinXP Pro SP2.
Just before I upgraded, I created a restore point. So, up to that time I
know System restore was working.

After upgrading,
- when I click on System Restore in the Control Panel, it says "System
restore has been turned off by group pollicy. To turn on ST, contact your
system admin."

When I right click on My Computer to get to System Properties, there is no
System Restore tab.

When I go to Services - System Restore Service, the status says "stopped".
I then select either Auto, Manual and then click Start. In both cases, I
get "Could not start the SR Service service on Local Computer. Error 5:
Access is denied."

On some message boards, they suggest re-installing sr.inf. So I went into
Windows/inf, right clicked on sr.inf and chose install. It went through the
motion of installing but after restarting, SR still isn't working I still
get the same error messages.

How do I get my SR to work again?
Click to expand...

All you wanted to know about System Restore: http://bertk.mvps.org/

And specifically, http://bertk.mvps.org/html/error.html#1
 
M

Matty

The first link <http://bertk.mvps.org/> is about using SR to restore Windows
to a previous state while in Normal or Safe mode.
This wasn't applicable in my case because
1. I'm not trying to restore Windows to a previous state.
2. Even if I want to restore Windows to a previous state, I can't because
System Restore isn't working in my compu. See the details about this in my
first post.

The first item in the second link http://bertk.mvps.org/html/error.html#1
appears to be useful = Error: Can't Access System Restore - Disabled by
Group Policy - or System Restore tab missing

Here's what happened after I followed instructions on that webpage:

First set on instructions:
1. Delete DisableSR and DisableConfig in registry ---> Found only DisableSR
in registry. Deleted Disable SR
2. Rebooted
3. Checked System properties by right-clicking My Computer --> still no
System Restore tab

Went on to follow second set of instructions (Look on line 278 left side.
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm)
1. Downloaded and used registry edit 278
2. Rebooted
3. Checked System properties by right-clicking My Computer --> still no
System Restore tab

Went on the third part of instructions - checking to see if my compu has a
Malware/Virus infection.
- I have Nod32, Spybot, XoftSpySE --> nothing, no alerts

Any other thoughts/suggestions?
 
M

Matty

Followed your suggestion:
Re-installed sr.inf
Rebooted

Results
1. Still no System restore in System Properties
2. Clicked on System Restore in Control Panel - message "System Restore is
not able to protect your computer. Please restart your computer, and then
run Sytem Restore again."
3. Restarted compu
4. Still no System restore in System Properties
5. Clicked on System Restore in Control Panel - message "System Restore is
not able to protect your computer. Please restart your computer, and then
run Sytem Restore again."

:(
 
M

Matty

I've actually tried this several times before, tried it again just now.

While in Safe Mode:
1. System restore tab is missing from System Properties
2. When I "start" System Restore in "Services" (Admin tools), I get "Could
not start the SR Service service on Local Computer. Error 5: Access is
denied"
 
M

Matty

I don't know if this will help but here are some more info that may or may
not be relevant:

1. Checked Event viewer and found these:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: SRService
Event Category: None
Event ID: 104
Date: 8/23/07
Time: 6:32:52 PM
User: N/A
Computer: NGE
Description:
The System Restore initialization process failed.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 05 00 00 00 ....

2. Went back to your webpage (http://bertk.mvps.org/html/error.html#7) to
look up this error description. Webpage says:
C:\ Drive no available or excluded from System Properties
This can occur if the C: drive is replaced with a new drive and move to the
secondary position (D:) and the System Volume Information folder is left in
place.

3. I didn't install any new drive. I do have two partitions:

C: NTFS
PRESARIO_RP D: FAT32

Note - D is the recovery partition that was pre-installed in my compu.

4. I remember that during my upgrading to XP Pro, I got a lot of the same
error message for many many files. The error message was:

Error occurred while copying file ______. Cannot copy file to destination
directory. Click Retry or Cancel.

Some of these files were pinball.ex_, sound111.wa_ (and a bunch of other
sound#.wa_ files; # referring to different numbres); a bunch of what seems
to be MS OE files (wabimp.dl_, wabfind.dl_, msoe.dl_, etc.), wmplayer.ex_.

I just clicked "Cancel" in each case, assuming that I can always check later
if MSOE or some other program does not work.
After I was done installing XP Pro and checked the programs that I asummed
were associated with the files that couldn't be copied - MSOE working; had
to re-install WMP; IE6 was in place instead of IE7 so I had to re-install
IE7.

5. After upgrading to XP Pro, I had a problem with hal.dll either missing or
corrupt. I followed the bootcfg /rebuild instructions on a post about a
similar problem.

6. After upgrading to XP Pro, on startup I had to choose between C: and
MiniNT (MiniNT is on D:). Since I know D: is just a recovery partition, I
of course chose to boot from C.

7. After upgrading to XP Pro, on startup boot.ini makes me select from XP
Pro and XP Home. This was addressed in another post here as an entry in
boot.ini that I can safely delete (XP Home was pointing to the same
partition).

Quite lengthy but I hope this will shed more light on my System Restore
problem.
 
M

Matty

My SR is up and running again.

I don't exactly know what caused it to run again since most of what I was
currently doing were just check ups; no installations.

1. Booted from XP PRO CD and did fixboot in Recovery Console
Rebooted - SR still not working

2. Thought of trying to reinstall sys.inf again from Pro SP2 CD following
this http://bertk.mvps.org/html/reinstall.html. So I had several sessions
of booting from CD to check for destination folder - didn't really achieve
my goal of finding out the destination folder since I never saw an
Extracting To dialog box.

Since the link mentioned reinstalling from XP SP2, I thought I should try
downloading just this XP SP2 and use that instead of my CD.

3. Back to compu - Still following
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/reinstall.html, I moved i386 folder to prep for
reinstalling.

4. Also opened the CD (while in Windows Normal mode) to see if there's an
option under "Install Win XP" to repair the installation. There was none so
I quit the CD.

5. So far, except for the fixboot, all I've done was just check back and
forth to find some more clues.

6. In the midst of all these checking back and forth, I thought I should
check my System Properties again.
Lo and behold, SR is back!!! Without my last SR point though (Aug. 23)
although I can still see the old restore file (from the date and time I
created the restore point before upgrading to WinXP Pro last Aug 23) in my
Sys Vol Info folder. I would think that doesn't matter anymore since that
old restore file was for my XP Home which I wouldn't want to go back to
anyway after all the trouble I went through to upgrade to WinXP Pro and make
it work.

Maybe all that repetitive restarting helped.
I don't know ... just glad SR is back.
 
M

Matty

I would think that doesn't matter anymore since that old restore file was
for my XP Home which I wouldn't want to go back to anyway after all the
trouble I went through to upgrade to WinXP Pro and make it work.
Click to expand...

Forgot that the old SR point wouldn't matter anyway since it wouldn't work
(?) with a new OS.
 

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