System Restore, Is it really needed?

I use Windows System Restore, when I get a frozen BSOD from M$ on my screen after reboot. M$ has always brilliant ideas. Sometimes I get blue screens and I don't have the time to read them. Pffft.
In case nobody noticed, Windows System Restore is useless when a frozen BSOD occurs. My posts is more a bad joke to show how M$ solves problems in a ridiculous way.

 

Without going too far off topic do many (any) see BSOD these days assuming using XP ? I can't say that I have seen one this millennium i.e since changing to windows 2000

To those who use SR doesn't it concern you that each time used your restored system is, at best, slightly different than before ? so that over time your system
is basically corrupting ? requiring more frequent re-installations ?

 

No BSOD's here since '98SE

I've used it for tough uninstalls.

Now you lost me. Are you talking chkdsk-errors or what

 

I've had mixed results in the past with system restore, which has left me with the view that "It's not something you want to rely on." That said, if it's all you have then it's all you have. For me it is very important to be able to get my machines up and running again fairly quickly and reliably, not to the extent of worrying about 6 minutes verses eight minutes, but minutes rather than hours. To that end I run what I find works, which so far is FD-ISR and ATI. It's all a balance of what your needs are.

 

If SR and recovery-disk fail, I would go to FD-ISR and ATI too. In XP-Home, SR failed for me. In XP-Pro, (using Avast also) it has not failed. I've only been using Avast for a few weeks, but it hasn't had a problem with full-scan of System Volume Information/folder yet. If you post at their forum http://forum.avast.com/index.php maybe someone their can help you, but if you don't use SR there is no harm in shutting it or its service off.

 

I had more BSODs on XP Pro SP1 when I moved to XP on a new computer in Nov 2003 than I ever had on 98SE. They were all due to infinite loop caused by my nVidia driver. I was very UNimpressed with XP to put it mildly. 98SE was much more stable, that is, until nVidia finally, after six months of BSOD hell, fixed the problem. Since then I have had a few BSODs. Mostly connected to RAM gone bad or other hardware problems. I had a slew of them about two years ago when Bit Defender Pro ver 9 suddenly moved to 9.5 and made the upgrade mandatory. My computer immediately BSODed on boot and said it was the Bit Defender driver that was the culprit. Every time I would boot bam! BSOD. I finally had to abandon BD as support blamed the problem on Spyware Blaster and Spybot (I was not using Teatimer). Other BSODs have been caused by other antivirus programs.

I don't think using SR is corrupting my system especially not to the point where I will eventually need to reformat. But I suppose I won't know for sure until I have had XP for a long time and used SR regularly during that time. My earlier XP box was 22 months old when it blew up and Dell finally replaced it and this current machine is 20 months old so maybe in another couple of years I can say one way or the other about SR and corruption.

 

As I understand it SR does not claim to restore a system exactly to the previous position ie you start out with a given system, you make a restore point, at some later time you restore and your system is not exactly the same as it was originally. As adverstised this does not matter. SR was designed to get you up and running, to get you out of a mess. Having to resinstall a couple of programs and drivers was seen as better than having to re-install completely. But MS never intended it to be a replacement for a full blown imaging program - just a band aid.

So my concern is that if used regularly it will mean that your system moves further and further away from its original stable state ?

 

It changes some things to what they were at time of restore point, like registry and settings. But it doesn't image the whole drive, so it can't restore everything. For example, you have AntiVir installed-make a restore point-uninstall AntiVir-activate SR-when it boots back up, AntiVir is not restored and it tells you so. It can't restore it to something that it never was. Just a few things that were there. Registry and settings. You know, back to the last good boot-up. It lacks the power of something like FD-ISR, that can recover a mirror-image of what was saved to image. The restore points of SR is quite small. It's like saving the settings of your browser. They don't restore the browser-just the configs.

 

It's a good feature to have, "just in case". Nice to have something else to revert to if something gets hosed in your system.

Yes if your PC becomes infected...the system restore will include that infection in it's restore points, and antivirus programs have a problem cleaning restore points. A solution is to delete your restore points....upon reboot..they will automatically be deleted.

Once your system is cleaned again..you can enable it..and even manually create a restore point once your system is running well.

With todays massive hard drives....the amount of space they consume isn't really anything to lose sleep over. You can even go in and manage how much space they will consume..trimming it down to the size you wish.

 

Yes. A leeky boat is better than no boat-until a better boat comes along!!!

 

well from where I'm sitting a whole bloody fleet has sailed by ( Ghost, Acronis, Paragon, FD-ISR, Shadow Neglect.......) perhaps they did not sail as far as
Chatham on the Thames ?

 

Only for those that can afford a ticket...and don't feel like bailing or treading anymore!

 

In case nobody noticed, Windows System Restore is useless when a frozen BSOD occurs. My posts is more a bad joke to show how M$ solves problems in a ridiculous way.

 

I have also enjoyed excellent protection with GoBack for the past five years on four different systems.

The original {free} Roxio Version was included with NSW 2003 and Norton SystemWorks 2005 had a more sophisticated Norton version 4 that allows 'file recovery'. (deletions as well as after a "System Restore" recovery)

Considering the Costco Rebate, it was also nearly 'free'. Easy to use and does its restore before Windows begins to load.

I do keep a backup on an external drive as well, but have never needed to use it and have avoided need to 'Re-Install OS' as well.

Only limitation (with a 10% 'bin') is about a two day maximum protection and only danger would be a 'bad' sector on the HD that happened to be located within that bin.

 

If you're using FD-ISR you don't need SR and you can disable it and reclaim disk space.

 

SR uses up so little space I don't even worry. I don't get the automatic daily restore points, only when doing new installs. And anything of any importance is regularily saved to cd, and...

...if I had these kind of problems (freezes or BSODs) and got tired of using the recovery disk for repair/reinstall, I think I spend the $$$ on something that could help me diagnose these problems, or maybe just put it towards a new 'puter. Once this pc couldn't handle XP, I think I'd just install linux on it for the grandkids and let them play with the pretty pc that can't do much! (nyuk nyuk nyuk) Sorry for the sarcasm, Erik....but my last crash was Ubuntu. And before that it was on factory installed '98 (roflol). I had a conservative-upbringing, we didn't throw money at something that didn't want to work. We let it collect dust 'til we could find something it was useful for.

 

Yeah but rather than set up a restore point and lose your latest entrees, I just boot to FD-ISR snapshot #2. Then I update it to the primary snapshot and it's like it never happened.

 

Turning off system restore is advisable as long as you have a restore/snapshot/imaging software so if something bad happens you can retore your pc to a good state. System restore (windows) will not be of any use when you are unable to boot into windows. For that a 3rd party software is what is needed. I've been using Rollback Rx for a while now with few problems. Although I should also have an imaging software i've not gottin around to it yet. Rollback has saved me quite a few times and never have I regretted buying it. Personily i'm thinking about ATI11 or Paragon.

 

That's what "Create a New Restore Point" does. It adds one without erasing the old restore points. If I keep all (SR) restore points, they can take a max of 12% of all free space. Which "properties" tells me is all of 28,615GB, which still leaves me the better part of 200GB left of free space from the 250GB that I started with. Might as well use it since it can do no harm. A recovery disk came included with the pc so that is another viable alternative. When that fails, I have an (paid for) XP-Home installation-disk in waiting. I also have a live-cd ready to install Ubuntu. I cannot (and will not) spend $70/year for recovery software when I have other viable alternatives. Especially when I have nothing on this computer that can't be replaced. The thread-starter asked if it would hurt to shut SR off. The answer is NO. But does it hurt to leave it on? NO. Would I leave SR on if I had a FD-ISR (or a suitable alternative) install-disk. YES, but only until I remembered to turn it off. The only forseeable problem for the thread-starter is if he only has SR and shuts it off, and most pc's nowadays can burn cd/dvd's so burning impotant data to disk goes without saying. A better alternative would save time, that's it. PC's don't die without Windows.

 

System Restore's biggest flaw is that it encrypts any malware that the system had on it at the restore point. That's why it *always* needs to be turned off when running malware scans. SR was developed mainly for Windows users who have little experience of the workings a PC, and who like to download stuff (especially free stuff) will-nilly.

 

BSOD very rare....very, very rare....can not even remember the last one....

System Restore used infrequently as well. I am careful about what I load and what is loaded that causes problems has so far uninstalled without issues...always do cleanups though no matter what it is.

I did have GoBack I think from Norton a long time ago. That gave me a lot of trouble...

 

That is utter nonsense. I have NEVER turned off System Restore and it has not ever interfered with a malware scan. I assume you are talking about something like Spybot? I no longer have it but did use it, until the current version, for many years. I have no malware scanner at all presently. I have an Antivirus scanner though (which also scans for malware) but I seldom do full scans and the first thing I do with a new AV scanner is exclude System Volume Information from both real time and on demand scanning. That MUST ALWAYS be done, otherwise, there is no point in having System Restore as your AV will go in there and corrupt all the restore points. I don't think you have ever read Microsoft's article on System Restore and viruses.

 

i totally agree

 

or to mis-quote from Black Adder

"System Restore is like a broken pencil"

 

Please edit your post immediately. You have no business taking my comment TOTALLY OUT OF CONTEXT to meet your twisted notions.

I stated "That MUST ALWAYS be done, otherwise, there is no point in having System Restore as your AV will go in there and corrupt all the restore points."

System Restore should be used IMO even by those who have an imaging program. I wouild never be without System Restore so you have completely and deliberately misquoted me.