Using System Restore

Before leaving this topic, let me address a question some of you may have about Windows System Restore and why this hasn’t gotten much attention along with backups and drive images.

For those of you not familiar with it, System Restore (see Figure 5.3) is a feature added to recent versions of Windows (Millennium and XP) that allows you to make images of your system, called restore points, that serve as markers of how your system is set up at the time they’re recorded. The theory is that you can then restore these points when you encounter a problem that messes up your Windows setup. It’s like being able to take your PC back in time before a problem occurred.

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Figure 5.3: You can create or restore points in System Restore.

This isn’t new software technology; there are a few commercial utilities that have allowed you to do this for several years. System Restore is simply a scaled-down version of those.

While I was pleased to see this feature added to Windows Me and XP, I haven’t found it to work well in practice. For one, System Restore usually writes the restore points to your primary hard drive and for reasons I’ve already explained, storing copies of data in the same place as the original data is a risky way to protect yourself.

Second, many users reinstall Windows in a panic whenever they have a problem; they usually don’t try to use the restore points. So the very act of reinstalling Windows may damage those restore points so that they can no longer be used to restore Windows to the previously recorded setup.

Also, System Restore can only do so much. If you change settings or install something that interferes with Windows, restoring one of these points may really help. But it won’t do anything to help a serious hardware failure or when your system has reached the point where Windows won’t load, regardless of what you try.

Finally, restore points seem particularly susceptible to disruption. Not all of this is poor design, since some users often perform tasks that contribute to the problems, such as trying to delete restore points improperly to save disk space (and the more restore points you have, the greater the disk space it takes).

If you’re using System Restore and find it works well for you, keep using it. But use other methods like backups and drive images to store data off that primary hard drive to be sure you’ll have your files.

Whether you realize it or not, you’ve probably already improved your analytical skills just in reading about the major PC components and the way your PC and Windows handles your hardware. Now it’s time to pull some of these concepts together and begin developing and refining your ability to effectively troubleshoot problems you may have. Turn to Chapter 6, “Transforming Yourself into a Smart Troubleshooter: Detecting, Analyzing, and Diagnosing.”



PC Disaster and Recovery
PC Disaster and Recovery
ISBN: 078214182X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 140
Authors: Kate J. Chase

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