NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, May 2011
Your Computer's Health – The “Oh Oh” Moment, Part 2
By Art Gresham, Editor,
Under the Computer Hood User Group, CA
February 2011 issue, UCHUG Drive Light

1editor101 (at) uchug.org
(click to email author)

Oops. Darn, What The....? You know the feeling. Yesterday everything was fine. Today you are wondering what happened overnight. What can you do if your computer seems to have suddenly gotten sick? Perhaps it was caused by that neat new application, or game, you installed yesterday, or maybe something got installed when you visited that website that promised to speed your computer's internet access, but when you the page opened it ran a moment and then seemed to hang up with no sense that it really did what was expected. Maybe you should not have installed that app/game/utility because it was some kind of rogue or worthless program, or worse, and you are now stuck with a sick system.

Don't you wish you could go back in time to last weekend when everything seemed to be running fine? Well, you can. Probably.

If you are running a Microsoft Windows ME, XP, Vista or 7 then the System Restore is available to offer you protection for many of these kinds of illness, and might be worth checking to see if you can regain your computer’s health.

System Restore allows you to roll back most system files, registry keys, and installed programs, the DLL Cache folder, local user profiles, and more. When installed, and not disabled (more about that later) you may manually create a restore point, or use one of the automatically created points. And it does this without affecting your personal files, or data such as e-mail, documents, or photos. We will discuss full backups that include your data in a future article.

Also note that in Vista and later versions it has been improved and now uses “Shadow Copy” Technology with even more backup capabilities.

So where do you look to see if you have any restore points? You should do this today to be sure it is not disabled. Open System Restore by clicking the Start button, clicking All Programs, clicking Accessories, clicking System Tools, and then clicking System Restore. Be sure to select “Restore my computer to an earlier time,” then click Next.

You will see a calendar of the current month, and several of the dates should be marked in Bold. These dates have restore points available, and some may have more than one as shown below. You may have multiple restore points for several reasons.

Wikipedia lists the Restore points that are created:
• When software is installed using the Windows Installer, Package Installer or other installers which are aware of System Restore.[note]
• When Windows Update installs new updates to Windows.
• When the user installs a driver that is not digitally signed by Windows Hardware Quality Labs.
• Every 24 hours of computer use (10 hours in Windows Me), or every 24 hours of calendar time, whichever happens first. This setting is configurable through the registry or using the deployment tools. Such a restore point is known as a system checkpoint. System Restore requires Task Scheduler to create system checkpoints. Moreover, system checkpoints are only created if the system is idle for a certain amount of time.
• When the operating system starts after being off for more than 24 hours.
• When the user requests it. On Windows Vista, shadow copies created during File Backup and Complete PC Backup can also be used as restore points.
Older restore points are deleted as per the configured space constraint on a First In, First Out basis. [Wikipedia] To begin a restore simply click on the date you want, and then click Next a couple times. Your system will restart and hopefully you have healed the patient.

If you do not see any restore points, you might want to check that the process is not disabled. To do this in XP you can right click My Computer, open the Properties, and click on the System Restore Tab. There you will see a checkbox where you can “Turn of System Restore on all drives. Be sure that is un-checked. For Win 7 see the FAQ How do I turn System Restore on or off?

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Restore
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/What-is-System-Restore
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/What-types-of-files-does-System-Restore-change

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