System Restore, Is it really needed?

Agreed Brother. And consider the source (i.e., a promoter of the very mediocre Dr. Web).

Mahalo

(part-time resident Kailua-Kona)

 

i shall do no such thing!

 

I haven't read all the comments on this topic. I'm running xp media center, and system restore is completely worthless on this computer. I had 4 different restore points made. I decided to restore my computer to an earlier date. Not because I needed to. I just wanted to see if system restore worked.

i tried all 4 of the different restore points that I had made...one at a time of course. Not one restore point worked. A message would come up and say something like "can't be restored to this date" or something like that. I don't remember the exact words. I immediately disabled system restore.

For me, system restore is completely worthless in "windows me". which was a previous operating system I used to use. and is equally worthless on the xp operating system. It hasn't worked one single time on either of my 2 computers.
one is a dell computer with xp, the other is a old hp computer dual booting windows me and xubuntu linux.

 

Amazing the different experinces there is no consistance. This also speaks volumns about System Restore. Might just be a crap shoot.

System Restore worked poorly for me also when I had ME OS, but then again ME had some bad operating issues in general.

XP Home no problems, but again used infrequently and usually there was short time between the two points.

EDIT and a Note of consideration: One must always be careful when quoting someone by clipping a portion of their quote...things can be misunderstood. I will say no more about this.

 

Mr2Cents - You could have been writing about my experiences with System Restore. Perhaps I was luckier ? several times I did get a restore but then found
that I had to re-install a number of programs. If this was the only protection available I would have been grateful but Imaging is not exactly something new
or expensive and is far more reliable as far as I'm concerned.

The thing that interests me is that some posters have never had any success with SR and others reports that it works every time. I wonder how the different experiences can be explained ? certainly a very divisive program - one that people seem to love or to hate.

 

Back before I disabled SR in favor of FD-ISR, I had the same problem for a while,not being able to do a successful restore. Then I read a thread in Wilders I believe, which said that you must turn off your firewall first, then do the restore. I tried it and it worked. Go figure.

 

Not until you have a corrupt driver update you cant get around or install a program trial that kill part of he registry...

This is one of those tool that "U" don't need until its needed...
Like many stated above, it's not perfect but it certainly is better than nothing. I remember too well the days before system restore, A lot of people did reinstall windows for simple problems they couldn't fix. Same problems today are no trouble at all... Just a quick reboot into safe mode and select the restore point and voila! Problem solved.. most of the time

As a matter of fact I used it on my system two days ago after getting bad driver advice on driversagent.com...

 

Suppose you have a frozen BSOD on your screen after reboot. Can you still do a quick reboot into safe mode and select a restore point and say "voila!" ?

 

My SR works just fine! But now (***** ) I got a replacement (shhh) and I couldn't turn SR off quick enough!!!

 

Until MS build in a kinda app. like ISR something stuff then ISR solutions from thirth party providers [Leapfrog] are the way to go,as is many times proven by your fellow Wilders members.Besides that FDISR can do many more such as to recover from total disaster in combo with ATI,SP etc. to bring your system current in about 20 min.Obviously you will get the notion that the MS solution "system restore" will pale to nothing in compare with the previous combo.

 

Like I said it works most of the time... You always have exceptions, like when you corrupt the DET or FAT on your disk... No amount of "Restore" will do any good until you FDISK the partition and then format and reload.

In this case what good would a recover (any in this case) would do? (unless you use disk imaging which usually excludes current data backups anyways).

Besides the point I made was that at least it exist and works relatively well, but unlike Gerry Falwell... it doesn't perform "Free" miracles!

I recover systems all day for clients who have had the dumb idea to turn it off. Great for me as I get paid to do something that would have often been an easy thing to do for free using it...

So keep arguing and please "DO NOT USE IT ANYMORE"... Hehehehe.. $$$ all the way to the bank!

Besides many of the Issues users blame on the "System" is often related to aggregated data corruptions, in which case the Disk is corrupting data slowly and irrecoverably in most cases. By the time you realize you need a restore. You cant recover at all because you would have built a gradual increase in corrupted components over your entire restore spectrum. Meaning when you do restore you are re integrated a component that is about or is already broken and waiting to be invoked and activated to actively fail... As a result it is more advisable to "Re Build" a fresh system as it will eliminate most of these issues... Backing up Your data ultimately is the only thing that matter.

As a result System restore is basically "Good Enough" for the job. I personally would not invest in anything else. I would focus instead on a good "Backup" protocol for my data since it is actually more preferable for the reasons stated above.

 

I am definitely not an advanced user, so I have relied on System Restore--going back to a good restore point--when I had Windows ME and also now with XP Home Edition. I have used system restore many, many times, and it has saved me a great deal of aggravation! I have gotten into the habit of infallibly creating a new restore point before installing anything at all. This has saved me many times. Sometimes, the most innocuous new program will wreak havoc in unexpected ways, and I can always fix it with a restore. Once, after I had installed a new Adobe program, when the computer rebooted, everything on the desktop--all icons and all words, everything--was just "heiroglyphic" symbols Nothing was readable or decipherable. And everything in the programs list was the same! How can you even find the system restore option when nothing is readable?! Well, with the help of a friend's computer, I was able to trace each "gibberish" line until I could click on the one that was the system restore option. When the system restore point calendar came up, it was easy to pick any date previous--and the computer was restored to normal! I never figured out why installing the Adobe program corrupted everything, but I was able to rely on system restore to fix it. For the average user like me, it is really needed, in my opinion.

 

I use system restore but I do not rely on it.
I have images for disaster recovery.
I find it useful for installing software testing and rolling back because it creates restore points automatically.
I have had sucess with it after installing broken drivers and only being able to boot into safe mode.
I have yet to use it to fix problems that have occured out of the blue.

 

System Restore get you back to business most of the time hopefully, this applies to most of every user out there, but people who promote the "beautyfull " things about SR here on Wilders gotta something to learn about the Imaging/ISR solutions provided here.

 

Imaging software doesn't backup your data... Otherwise you have to image the disk every few minutes to be effective.

The only good thing about SR is it's Free and it works! But you should still backup your DATA to an external medium... I stress that because most people believe it or not never backup. Probably because of the false safety programs like SR provides them. They rely on it once or twice, and feel safe because it saved their hides a few times, until they have a major system crash and no one is able to recover the data from their dead hard disk... consequence: All data is lost!

 

Yes, I believe you can via the Recovery Console, if you can't even get into safe mode, use the
XP CD. Once in Recovery Console access System Restore by typing
%systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe
If you can get into safe mode all's OK and you can select Recovery Console
provided you have installed it (cmdcons). It will be shown in msconfig>boot.ini

 

me. ROFLMAO

 

Believe, IF's, rstrui.exe, cmdcons, ... sounds all very UNuserfriendly and UNtested to me. You really have to try one of these ISR-softwares, nothing but simple mouse-work and in my case, a simple reboot.

 

I can't say it any better !!

 

LOL, one out of three for me, but then that was a custom build. So 66% of the time I'd be scrued.

 

Yes for desktops I will only buy from a vendor who supplies the windows cd, but for laptops I tend to buy off the shelf manufacturers such as Toshiba (last one) and IBM before that, one had a recovery partition the other has a manufacturers restore disc.