System Restore

[Terry]

My niece installed some screen saver program and caused some pop ups
from hell. One of the files it put in startup was winable.exe.

Anyway, I downloaded Adaware and am scanning my computer now. I was
talking to a friend and she said that when something like that happens
to her, she can sometimes fix it using System Restore.

I remember reading many times that if you turn off System Restore it
will actually improve your computer's performance.

I never disabled it, but I have never used it.

What do the experts think?

Thanks for your time.

 

[Unknown]

Never, never, turn off system restore EXCEPT when you want to clear all
restore points. (Then turn it back on).
Turning it off clears one option you have of fixing your computer. Turning
it off has absolute insignificant effect on system performance.

 

[Lem]

My niece installed some screen saver program and caused some pop ups
from hell. One of the files it put in startup was winable.exe.

Anyway, I downloaded Adaware and am scanning my computer now. I was
talking to a friend and she said that when something like that happens
to her, she can sometimes fix it using System Restore.

I remember reading many times that if you turn off System Restore it
will actually improve your computer's performance.

I never disabled it, but I have never used it.

What do the experts think?

Thanks for your time.

System Restore is a useful, although occasionally unreliable, tool. As
the name implies, it restores *system* files -- not data files.
Therefore, if you have disks (or partitions) that do not have system
files on them, you should disable SR for those partitions. By default,
SR takes 12% of the disk space. Now that hard drives are so much larger
than when SR was designed, that's too much. You should manually set SR
to use about 1 GB.

I suggest not disabling SR for the partition that includes Windows.
However, if you don't use SR, you should consider downloading and
*regularly* running ERUNT, a free registry restore utility:
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/

You also should regularly back up your data. If you do this by creating
a full disk image or disk clone using a utility such as Acronis True
Image or Norton Ghost, restoring such backups can restore all your
system files, including the registry, as well as everything else on the
disk.

For a very comprehensive discussion of System Restore, see MVP Bert
Kinney's site: http://bertk.mvps.org/

 

[Bert Kinney]

Hi Terry,

How long ago was this screen saver program installed?

If it has only been a few day them, go to Add/remove programs in Control
Panel and try to uninstall it from there. Then use these instructions to
restore the computer to just before the program was installed.

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

As far as performance goes, you should see decrease in performance with
System Restore enabled.

Here is a description of System Restore in Windows XP:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/description.html

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

 

[Terry]

Hi Terry,

How long ago was this screen saver program installed?

If it has only been a few day them, go to Add/remove programs in Control
Panel and try to uninstall it from there. Then use these instructions to
restore the computer to just before the program was installed.

That would have been my last resort. When I tried, I only had one
restore point. It was dated the day in question.

I am thinking that another program that could have caused it is MSN
games, but I haven't talked to my niece about it yet.

It was a nasty program. I used Adaware and also F Secure. I was
still getting pop ups and I didn't even have IE open.

I think it might have been able to disable some of F Secure's
features. I got a message from a new install of F Secure saying there
was a malfunction in the spyware part of the install.

Anyway. I have reinstalled from factory and it couldn't have been
easier. I didn't even need a disk. It is a Dell laptop

Thanks everyone for your help

 

[Bert Kinney]

That would have been my last resort. When I tried, I only had one
restore point. It was dated the day in question.

I am thinking that another program that could have caused it is MSN
games, but I haven't talked to my niece about it yet.

It was a nasty program. I used Adaware and also F Secure. I was
still getting pop ups and I didn't even have IE open.

I think it might have been able to disable some of F Secure's
features. I got a message from a new install of F Secure saying there
was a malfunction in the spyware part of the install.

Anyway. I have reinstalled from factory and it couldn't have been
easier. I didn't even need a disk. It is a Dell laptop

Thanks everyone for your help

Try that restore point. It can always be undone.

Next step:
Read this Announcement and follow it's instructions.
http://aumha.net/viewtopic.php?t=4075

Then post a HiJackThis log to this forum.
AumHa HiJackThis Forum:
http://aumha.net/viewforum.php?f=30


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