Sarasota PC Monitor

Practicing the Black Art (1/05)

System Restore

by Vinny La Bash, vlabash@home.com
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.

Have you ever wished you could travel back in time and undo something you wished you hadn't done? In one sense, Windows XP System Restore tool let's you do that. The tool takes a "snapshot" of all your system settings, and if something happens that makes your computer appear to wander into an alternate universe, you can use the restore point to recover.

System Restore does not affect your personal data files. It won't change any of your Word documents or your email. You won't lose any of your Favorites, and you can still keep track of your browsing history.

It's important to understand what the tool can do, and what it can't do. The tool takes some unfair criticism for not being able to do something that Microsoft never claimed it could do in the first place. The name of the tool is System Restore, not Data Restore. That is a crucial difference. If you do something dumb to destroy your data files, System Restore won't help you because it wasn't designed for that purpose. You may as well try to take someone's temperature with a ruler. It won't work because it's the wrong tool for the job. If you deleted any of your data files, you will need a different tool to restore them.

Windows XP Professional does make it possible to resolve system problems if they occur. Let's say that you decide to install an updated driver for one of your peripheral devices such as a printer or slide scanner. Windows XP marks a "restore point" to remove this change if problems arise.

XP also creates a daily restore point automatically. If that's not enough, you can create your own restore points. Any change you make to your computer involves risk, so creating a restore point manually immediately before you make any changes gives you some insurance against catastrophe. If Murphy's Law does kick in and something goes wrong, select a restore point and Windows XP undoes any system changes made since that time.

Microsoft puts a helpful calendar on the screen to make it easy to find restore points when you activate the utility. The number of restore points displayed is a function of how often you use the machine, and how you use it. Some days may not have any restore points if you don't use your system daily. Other days may show multiple restore points.

While System Restore can be a desirable feature, in some cases it should be temporarily turned off. If the computer is infected with a virus, the virus could be backed up by System Restore. By default, Windows prevents System Restore from being modified by outside programs opening the possibility that you could restore a virus infected file. One of the reasons why a virus may seem impossible to remove is that anti-virus programs cannot detect a virus backed up by System Restore. In order to ensure that any machine is really clean, System Restore must be temporarily disabled while your anti virus program cleans up the system.

Disabling System Restore does not delete or remove any of your personal data from your computer. The only files removed are those that System Restore created which are the restore points. You must be logged in as an Administrator to do this. If you are not logged in as an Administrator, the System Restore tab will not be displayed.

Fortunately, it's easy to turn off System Restore if the need arises.

  1. Right click on the My Computer icon on your Desktop.
  2. Select Properties from the popup menu.
  3. When the System Properties dialog box appears, left-click on the System Restore tab.
  4. Check the box that says Turn off System Restore on all drives.
  5. Click on OK and you're done. :

Return to Vinny La Bash's Index

Return to Columnist's Index

Copyright 2005. This article is from the January 2005 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/

The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,100+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.

See http://www.spcug.org for all reviews from the Sarasota PC Monitor, go to the Newsletter Section.