system restore question

[carl43m]

About 4 months ago I used system restore and everything went well. Since
then I have had a few issues develop and I wanted to do a restore back to
when the pc was working fine. However, I do not remember what date I had
gone back to to get everything going ok. Is there some way that I can find
out what date was used for the last system restore point used so I can use it
again? Thanks.

 

[Jerry]

Probably not. Restore points are kept for only a certain number of days,
usually 30, or are space limited, which you contol. If the space is being
filled as programs are installed 'older' restore points are eliminated.

 

[Al and Darlene]

One beauty of System Restore is the ability to reverse a restore.

 

[peter]

maybe you should explain the issues or you will be doing a
restore every few months
which does NOT solve the problem

peter

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Probably not. Restore points are kept for only a certain number of days,
usually 30,

No, it's 90 days.

 

[Bill in Co.]

The space limitation will most likely get him first.

Let's see, if we assumed an average of 60 MB per restore point (and that's
on the low side), and assumed a single restore point each day (again,
doesn't allow for any other additional restore point creations, due to new
software being added), then we'd need at least 5400 MB or 5.4 GB reserved
space on the HD for 3 months, but that's on the low side (too many
conservative assumptions in there). So the bottom line is, he's out of
luck on going back that far with System Restore, and not only due to that
reason, either

 

[Jose]

No, it's 90 days.

Where can I adjust the 90 day setting?

 

[Jose]

maybe you should explain the issues or you will be doing a
restore every few months
which does NOT solve the problem

peter

--
If you find a posting or message from me offensive,inappropriate
or disruptive,please ignore it.
If you dont know how to ignore a posting complain
to me and I will be only too happy to demonstrate

Peter, you're (almost) as obnoxious as Jose!

 

[carl43m]

thanks for all the replies. Over the past couple of months I had noticed
that things were slowing down, ie. slow web page changes, pc games slowing
down, slow to open new files. I had 1 GB of Ram on an XP home system. A
week ago I added another 1GB to get to 2GB the max for this laptop. Samne
issues continued. I have Zone alarm antivirus/firewall/spyware. REan a full
deep scan in safe mode --no virus identified but several spyware items
identified and deleted. Then ran Microsoft malware tremoval tool and windows
live help and nothing showed there either.

Thats when I started to think of a system restore.

 

[carl43m]

it was windows one care that I ran --not anything called live help

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

The space limitation will most likely get him first.

Let's see, if we assumed an average of 60 MB per restore point (and that's
on the low side), and assumed a single restore point each day (again,
doesn't allow for any other additional restore point creations, due to new
software being added), then we'd need at least 5400 MB or 5.4 GB reserved
space on the HD for 3 months, but that's on the low side (too many
conservative assumptions in there). So the bottom line is, he's out of
luck on going back that far with System Restore, and not only due to that
reason, either

Yes, it's not really useful to go back more than a week or two. if you
go back too far, you tend to get the registry out of synch with other
files on the drive.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

thanks for all the replies. Over the past couple of months I had noticed
that things were slowing down, ie. slow web page changes, pc games slowing
down, slow to open new files. I had 1 GB of Ram on an XP home system. A
week ago I added another 1GB to get to 2GB the max for this laptop. Samne
issues continued.

Depends on what apps you run, but very few people can make effective
use of 2GB.

I have Zone alarm antivirus/firewall/spyware. REan a full
deep scan in safe mode --no virus identified but several spyware items
identified and deleted. Then ran Microsoft malware tremoval tool and windows
live help and nothing showed there either.

Thats when I started to think of a system restore.

If you are infected with spyware (and that sounds likely), a System
Restore is highly unlikely to help you.

 

[SC Tom]

No, it's 90 days.

Where can I adjust the 90 day setting?

-------------
I don't think there is anywhere to adjust that. The only setting I've ever
seen is for the amount of disk space reserved. My restore points go back to
May 16, and are taking up 16.6GB. It's not likely that I'd ever try to go
back that far. I tried going back about 3 or 4 weeks once, and ran into a
new batch of problems, although IIRC they were less troublesome than the
problem I was trying to fix originally. I've used SR a few times with very
good results, but usually as a last resort. That's the only reason I don't
turn it off.

Unless, of course, you were just being facetious with your question, in
which case just ignore this post

SC Tom