System Restore and what else?

Having just upgraded from XP to Win7 (yes, i am taking my time I had to say goodbye to my trusted FDIsr. It saved my bacon a few times and I always felt more relaxed when doing windows updates or installing new programs knowing I can so easily and reliably roll back. I know that there are some special guidelines to configure this to work on Win7 but since my new PC is a Dell, I am not daring to go there (having read Karen's post).

I do have shadowprotect and regularly do images and have my backup of data to other drives. Can I just rely on the inbuilt system restore in Win7 in case of a bad installation (and my image if absolutely necessary) or should I add something else for a quick roll-back?

 

I don't rely on win 7 inbuilt image recovery. It let me down too many times. I didn't happen to use the shadowprotect but if you make images of system partition and you have cases of successful restorations of images then imho no need in this windows inbuilt facilities.

 

I agree that I would rather rely on Shadowprotect as it completely restores everything. The reason I liked FDIsr was that it gave me an easy first choice that did not require me to overwrite the drive. I always felt that if FDIsr could not roll back, I still had the option of using the image. On the other hand, if you use an image and overwrite your drive and it does to work (for whatever reason), you are in trouble. I have only done a few restores with image and while they worked, I felt it was a tense moment.

 

System Restore and Shadowprotect should be fine. System Restore works for me 95% of the time.

 

As far as I am aware, Windows System Restore only restores the registry database, profile data, and deleted/modified files, but it is far from a true restoration such as an imaging app, because it leaves behind much data that one would likely not want. it works for a quick 'undo' of the areas mentioned but not at all a rollback style utility.

In my opinion, using system restore and at the very least, the built in windows backup/imaging in order to have a complete backup available if needed.

 

It should remove anything that was added outside of your user profile folder.

 

just as a point of interest.Some security suites notably comodo do not survive a system restore.I always experienced this with comodo in particular.

 

System Restore failed enough on me to have it disabled permanently.

each restore points eats up hundreds of megabytes anyway.

restoring an image is the way to go, imo

 

agreed.

 

I've restored a few times in the past couple days and Comodo still works fine.

System Restore is another layer of protection. I'd rather try SR first before betting the farm on an image that could fail. Besides, I prefer not to burn out my SSD too much with routine image restores.

A few hundrd Megabytes? Pfftt...

 

Same, here.
I've Never trusted System Restore.

 

I am amazed at how many people say SR has failed for them. It has never let me or my wife down, of course, we only started using it in Windows 7 never in XP. Also, I only use it in Safe Mode.

Acadia

 

There have always been Exceptions to Rules...

 

LOL, that is. Unfortunately good work of Windows SR is close to exception of the rule. Really, most users wold be quite satisfied with it and wouldn't take trouble to learn other imaging programs. At least me would use only windows system restore but it failed to work on my both main computers!