Windows xp system restore function

[rjteague]

I tried to use system restore and it would not restore to several earlier
restore points, even ones I had created. However, after I shut down the
computer and restarted, I created a new restore point and tried to restore
again. This time it worked. This has happened in the past to me. My
question is what can I do to insure I can restore if something happens in the
future that I really need to restore to an earlier point?

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I tried to use system restore and it would not restore to several
earlier restore points, even ones I had created. However, after I
shut down the computer and restarted, I created a new restore point
and tried to restore again. This time it worked. This has
happened in the past to me. My question is what can I do to insure
I can restore if something happens in the future that I really need
to restore to an earlier point?

My true suggestion:
Not depend on the "System Restore" function at all and utilize true system
backups. System restore does *nothing* for your own files *and* since it
stores things on the same computer, it's not much of a 'just-in-case' backup
plan anyway, IMHO.

However - you probably want to know more, so hopefully this will help you
out:

You can learn more about the System Restore feature and such here:
http://bertk.mvps.org/index.html
(Use the menu system at the top. There are ways to troubleshoot issues,
etc.)

My suggestion for the system restore size - keep it right around 1GB (as
close as you can get to that without necessarily going below 1GB.) Seems to
keep things a bit more stable.

 

[Mrosen7542]

Reply Windows xp system restore function

Hi, rjteague. Use a program called ERUNT to back up your registry. This has bailed me out several times when System Restore decided not to work right for whatever reasons. Here's the link:
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/

 

[John Inzer]

I tried to use system restore and it would not restore to several
earlier restore points, even ones I had created. However, after I
shut down the computer and restarted, I created a new restore point
and tried to restore again. This time it worked. This has happened
in the past to me. My question is what can I do to insure I can
restore if something happens in the future that I really need to
restore to an earlier point?

==================================
Sometimes virus software can interfere with
System Restore. Do the System Restore from
Safe Mode.

(315222) A Description of the Safe Mode
Boot Options in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=315222

Also doing a regular a backup of your complete
system using software like Acronis True Image
is a good idea.

--


John Inzer MS-MVP
Digital Media Experience

Notice
This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk

 

[Tim Meddick]

Hi,
I have found System Restore to be hopeless on my machine. It seems
to do just what it likes! I have heard somewhere that it's supposed to
create regular System Restore Points but hardy ever does. Plus, after
making two or three restore points it wipes them off completely for no
reason or sometimes after running Disk Defragmenter. It absolutely cannot
be relied upon.

 

[John Inzer]

Hi,
I have found System Restore to be hopeless on my machine. It
seems to do just what it likes! I have heard somewhere that it's
supposed to create regular System Restore Points but hardy ever does.
Plus, after making two or three restore points it wipes them off
completely for no reason or sometimes after running Disk
Defragmenter. It absolutely cannot be relied upon.

=======================================
Maybe the following articles would be worth a read:

(301224) System Restore "Restore Points"
Are Missing or Deleted
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=301224

(302796) How to troubleshoot the System
Restore tool in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=302796

--


John Inzer MS-MVP
Digital Media Experience

Notice
This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk

 

[Gerry]

Tim

Many problems with System Restore are caused by anti-virus software,
especially Norton.

http://bertk.mvps.org/html/healthy.html

http://bertk.mvps.org/html/missingrps.html

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi,
I have found System Restore to be hopeless on my machine. It
seems to do just what it likes! I have heard somewhere that it's
supposed to create regular System Restore Points but hardy ever does.
Plus, after making two or three restore points it wipes them off
completely for no reason or sometimes after running Disk
Defragmenter. It absolutely cannot be relied upon.

 

[Tim Meddick]

Hi Gerry,
For the much greater part of my experiences with SR, I was
offline, and had no need of any AV software. It is only in the last quarter
that I have had the internet so installed AVG Free and Win Defender (Spybot
is now installed but I don't use it very much. As good as TeaTimer
undoubtedly is, it uses too much resources on my machine). My issues with
System Restore predate all of these programs and occurred soon after a fresh
(XP PRO SP2 CD) install. I now have upgraded it to SP3 and it still behaves
the same as it ever did. However, I will peruse over your links with
interest.
--

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.

Tim

Many problems with System Restore are caused by anti-virus software,
especially Norton.

http://bertk.mvps.org/html/healthy.html

http://bertk.mvps.org/html/missingrps.html

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi,
I have found System Restore to be hopeless on my machine. It
seems to do just what it likes! I have heard somewhere that it's
supposed to create regular System Restore Points but hardy ever does.
Plus, after making two or three restore points it wipes them off
completely for no reason or sometimes after running Disk
Defragmenter. It absolutely cannot be relied upon.

 

[Tim Meddick]

Hi Gerry.
I have looked at the very comprehensive pages your links took me
to. However, having read all, no issue mentioned applied to my system. I
repeat, restore points vanish at will, if they last a week I count myself
lucky. No AV software mentioned is installed, both the physical drives have
plenty of space on their single partitions. On a previous install, I tried
disabling SR on the second drive (so it was working only on the system
drive) and it disabled SR completely! - I'm not going to try that again. I
don't rely on it any more and use the Recovery Console to manually back up
the registry hives - which is the only thing I wanted SR for in the first
place. There's no in-built way of backing up the registry in XP like there
was in Win 95/98 something like Win98's Reg Backup (Scanregw.exe) would have
been good but alas, no. I downloaded a utility called "Emergency Recovery
Utility" (just like the one for Win95) also called EruNT.exe, for NT, which
has taught me how (which files) to back up the registry manually, although
this program automates this process.
--

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.

Tim

Many problems with System Restore are caused by anti-virus software,
especially Norton.

http://bertk.mvps.org/html/healthy.html

http://bertk.mvps.org/html/missingrps.html

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi,
I have found System Restore to be hopeless on my machine. It
seems to do just what it likes! I have heard somewhere that it's
supposed to create regular System Restore Points but hardy ever does.
Plus, after making two or three restore points it wipes them off
completely for no reason or sometimes after running Disk
Defragmenter. It absolutely cannot be relied upon.

 

[Gerry]

Tim

With System Restore it is important to only monitor the partition containing
the operating system. In particular you not monitor external removable
drives.

The next link describes how to disable monitoring of drives:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/drivedisable.html

It is quite simple to do.

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi Gerry.
I have looked at the very comprehensive pages your links
took me to. However, having read all, no issue mentioned applied to
my system. I repeat, restore points vanish at will, if they last a
week I count myself lucky. No AV software mentioned is installed,
both the physical drives have plenty of space on their single
partitions. On a previous install, I tried disabling SR on the
second drive (so it was working only on the system drive) and it
disabled SR completely! - I'm not going to try that again. I don't
rely on it any more and use the Recovery Console to manually back up
the registry hives - which is the only thing I wanted SR for in the
first place. There's no in-built way of backing up the registry in
XP like there was in Win 95/98 something like Win98's Reg Backup
(Scanregw.exe) would have been good but alas, no. I downloaded a
utility called "Emergency Recovery Utility" (just like the one for
Win95) also called EruNT.exe, for NT, which has taught me how (which
files) to back up the registry manually, although this program
automates this process.

 

[Tim Meddick]

Gerry,
I have twin Segate 37GB disks that are identical - one partition
on each. On disabling SR on drive D: and rebooting, SR was totally disabled
on ALL drives and could not be re-enabled whatever I did (which was to check
that inappropriate policy settings were not to blame). The option to enable
SR was "greyed-out". I have since re-installed XP and swapped the drives
round so the old OS is now a backup. I know how it's all supposed to work
but sometimes Windows XP acts in a way that defies logical explanation.
Anyway, at least it works some of the time at the moment - again - I am not
about to risk it totally disabling itself on me a second time, just to turn
off monitoring one of the drives with what benefit? Is it then going to
make the restore points last longer? Perhaps I should have said at the
start that in the beginning I only had ONE drive and it STILL did the same
thing. Deleting Restore Points at random intervals. Nothing I have heard
leads me to think that is going to change.
--

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.

Tim

With System Restore it is important to only monitor the partition
containing the operating system. In particular you not monitor external
removable drives.

The next link describes how to disable monitoring of drives:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/drivedisable.html

It is quite simple to do.

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi Gerry.
I have looked at the very comprehensive pages your links
took me to. However, having read all, no issue mentioned applied to
my system. I repeat, restore points vanish at will, if they last a
week I count myself lucky. No AV software mentioned is installed,
both the physical drives have plenty of space on their single
partitions. On a previous install, I tried disabling SR on the
second drive (so it was working only on the system drive) and it
disabled SR completely! - I'm not going to try that again. I don't
rely on it any more and use the Recovery Console to manually back up
the registry hives - which is the only thing I wanted SR for in the
first place. There's no in-built way of backing up the registry in
XP like there was in Win 95/98 something like Win98's Reg Backup
(Scanregw.exe) would have been good but alas, no. I downloaded a
utility called "Emergency Recovery Utility" (just like the one for
Win95) also called EruNT.exe, for NT, which has taught me how (which
files) to back up the registry manually, although this program
automates this process.

 

[Gerry]

Tim

My reaction is user error without wishing to deprecate your computer skills.

For most users today 74 gb is not a lot of disk space.

The default allocation to System Restore is 12% on your C partition,
which is over generous. I would reduce it to 700 mb. Right click your My
Computer icon on the Desktop and select System Restore. Place the cursor
on your C drive select Settings but this time find the slider and drag
it to the left until it reads 700 mb and exit. When you get to the
Settings screen click on Apply and OK and exit.

"so the old OS is now a backup" -how would you make use of this?

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gerry,
I have twin Segate 37GB disks that are identical - one
partition on each. On disabling SR on drive D: and rebooting, SR was
totally disabled on ALL drives and could not be re-enabled whatever I
did (which was to check that inappropriate policy settings were not
to blame). The option to enable SR was "greyed-out". I have since
re-installed XP and swapped the drives round so the old OS is now a
backup. I know how it's all supposed to work but sometimes Windows
XP acts in a way that defies logical explanation. Anyway, at least it
works some of the time at the moment - again - I am not about to risk
it totally disabling itself on me a second time, just to turn off
monitoring one of the drives with what benefit? Is it then going to
make the restore points last longer? Perhaps I should have said at
the start that in the beginning I only had ONE drive and it STILL did
the same thing. Deleting Restore Points at random intervals. Nothing I
have heard leads me to think that is going to change.

 

[Uwe Sieber]

I tried to use system restore and it would not restore to several earlier
restore points, even ones I had created. However, after I shut down the
computer and restarted, I created a new restore point and tried to restore
again. This time it worked. This has happened in the past to me. My
question is what can I do to insure I can restore if something happens in the
future that I really need to restore to an earlier point?

This happens when an external hard drive is
attached when the restore point is created
but not present at the same drive letter
when you want to restore the restore point.

See some thread above "Windows xp system restore
function".


Uwe