Hi, all,
XP home on my laptop crashed. so I did a system restore in safe mode (by
using "start-all program-accessories-system tools-system restore"), and I
bring the system back to the day when my laptop arrives.
so the system is alive again. but all the programs I installed all gone.
I
don't mind to reinstall them. but I found out in the folder" programm and
files", almost every old program I installed are still there except few
".exe" files are gone. I wonder what I should do with those left-overs.
Can I
simply delete them without crash or I should leave there untouched?
Well that's problematic. The best approach is to uninstall any software
that was installed after the date of the restore point that you intend to
restore to, then do the system restore. Because System Restore only
monitors some files, when the restore was done, those monitored files are
gone but the rest are left there, including the settings in the registry
which is the biggest problem.
Also system restore is best used immediately after a problem is discovered,
and one shouldn't go back to far. It's best used restoring to only a day or
two back.
You can try reinstalling the software and see what happens. Hopefully
things will go ok. Do it one item at a time and test in between. If there
are problems with an install, they you'll need to go to plan B. Delete the
left over files and use the Windows Installer Clean up Utility to remove
other remnants.
Description of the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=290301
If worse comes to worse you'll need to root through the registry to remove
problematic settings. In that case it's best to contact the tech support
for the program to get specific information on what to remove / how to
remove the program remnants.
System restore has it's place but I would recommend you also look into using
a drive imaging program. This will create a compressed image of a partition
or drive. Save the images to an external hard drive. Image regularly and
in the case of problems you can't otherwise solve, restore a recent image.
Vista Business and Ultimate come with Complete PC Backup which is drive
imaging. Otherwise, or for more functionality I recommend Acronis True
Image Home, version 10. After a full image subsequent images can be
incremental or differential saving time and space. Restores can be done on
a file, partition or drive basis. It also does file backup and disk
cloning.
You can purchase a preassembled external drive or put one together for much
less cost by buying a bare drive and putting it in an external drive
enclosure. Connect that through USB, eSata or Firewire to the computer.
