Thank You Bill Gates for System Restore

[WildHorse]

First time I ever needed it.

System Restore saved my butt today!!!

 

[keeleysam]

You're welcome.

 

[imported_LoKe]

Meh. I kept it off when I used Windows. I figured, if I got myself into a mess which would require me to use system restore, I deserve to be punished.

 

[jadinolf]

Originally posted by: scott
First time I ever needed it.

System Restore saved my butt today!!!

You're lucky. Only saved me once and I needed it a few times.

 

[corkyg]

Over the past several years, it has saved me several times - especially when adding a program that screws things up. S/R is a quick fix. I always set a new restore point any time I add something new - especially upgrades and patches.

 

[Smilin]

Amen.

 

[Noema]

I find it useful when testing drivers. I always create a restore point when installing-uninstalling drivers / codecs.

 

[sourceninja]

Everytime I've used system restore, it just made my system even more hosed.

 

[TeeJay1952]

Saving a good registry (weekly) sort of does what System Restore does without using alot of hard drive space and giving bugs another place to hide.

 

[StevenNevets]

It saved my butt once but has failed the last few days

While we're on the topic why does system restore fail?

It'll take 10 minutes tO "system restore" and re-boot but then it says "system cannot be restored to xxx"

 

[corkyg]

I dunno - it has never failed me. I used it today when I installed Windows Media Player 11 (Beta 2). I found that WMP11 could not play my MIDI files because it could not deal with the SoundMax synth, and was looking for a file that did not exist (synthcore11.exe.) So, I just ran System Restore and it removed ll and put the system back to 10. No problem - only took a few minutes.

Sometimes other things cause programs or data to be moved or changed AFTER a restore Point is established. Then it can't restore to that date.

For me it is a valuable tool - it does a little more than just change the registry.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Originally posted by: TeeJay1952
Saving a good registry (weekly) sort of does what System Restore does without using alot of hard drive space and giving bugs another place to hide.

Except of course when drivers get overwritten with new buggy versions, so that your registry restoration is still pointing to the same file names but they're still broken files.

I've never actually had to use SR, but it uses such tiny amounts of drive space, and that space is still actually freed up if you actually do start to encroach on running out of space (user space usage is prioritized over automatic SR space usage), and causes no performance loss that's noticeable, so I leave it on for any drives with programs being run from them. No point to it with data-only drives.

 

[DaiShan]

Originally posted by: StevenNevets
It saved my butt once but has failed the last few days

While we're on the topic why does system restore fail?

It'll take 10 minutes tO "system restore" and re-boot but then it says "system cannot be restored to xxx"

If Windows can't access a part of the restore point, then it will fail. Try restoring from safe mode next time and it should work better for you.