We all do an occasional “whoops” thing on our computers. Microsoft anticipated that when designing their Windows operating systems, so they built in some ‘Whoops erasers”. The Recycle Bin has been a part of Windows for years. If you delete a file by mistake, you can usually find it in the Recycle Bin and restore the file to its original location. If you’re using Outlook or Outlook Express for your email and delete an email by mistake, the program doesn’t really delete the email immediately, instead sending it to the Deleted Items folder where it will sit until you purge the contents of that folder. Once you do that, the email is really gone.
Starting with Windows ME and more widely advertised as part of Windows XP (and now Vista as well), Microsoft included a utility called System Restore, another of those ‘whoops erasers’. Although it has been around for years now, there is still a lot of confusion among users as to just what System Restore does and does not do.
First of all, System Restore is not intended as a full system backup. The only way to do that is with disk imaging to a separate storage location, most commonly now to an external hard drive. I’ve written about this before, and more and more people are taking the advice to heart. Remember that like human beings, all hard drives (where your system and data files are stored) die. It is not a question of if, but rather when. Some very good albeit somewhat dated technical information on drive backups can be found here: http://www.ugr.com/newsletters.html
System Restore is based on a series of snapshots of key system files. If something corrupts any of those key system files, you have the option and ability to roll your system back to an earlier time by restoring those files from the snapshot. System Restore is enabled by default. It definitely consumes hard drive storage space to store all those snapshots. By default, it is set to use 12% of the usable space on your system partition (almost always your ‘C’ drive) where the partition is over 4 gigabytes in size; otherwise it will use up to 400MB. For larger drive partitions, it can be configured to use up to 15% of available space. It requires at least 200MB of space; lacking that, it remains disabled until that amount of space is made available, at which point System Restore self-enables. As the maximum amount of allotted disk space is consumed, the oldest restore points are discarded.
The snapshots that System Restore takes are saved as Restore Points. The creation of those Restore Points occurs as the result of either events or time. Event driven snapshots are created when certain circumstances occur, including when 1.) new software is installed, where the installation program is designed to function with System Restore; 2.) the user installs a driver file that is not digitally signed by Windows Hardware Quality Labs; 3.) when Windows Update installs new security or OS updates; 4.) when the user chooses to manually create a Restore Point. Restore Points are also created every 24 hours (10 hours in Windows ME), as long as the system is idle – no mouse or keyboard or disk activity.
The snapshots consist primarily of your Windows Registry, user profiles, DLLs
(shared component files), and files with certain defined file extensions.
Specifically not included in the snapshots are your user-created data
files (Word, Excel, etc.), system passwords, and any file with a file extension
not included in the Monitored File Extensions List.
You can view your System Restore settings by going to the Control Panel, double clicking the System icon, and choosing the System Restore tab. To access the System Restore feature to either manually create a restore point or to roll back to a previous restore point, go to Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and choose System Restore.
When would you use System Restore? Basically, it is there as a fall-back if you encounter problems after installing a new program. If uninstalling the program does not solve the problem, rolling back to the prior restore point usually will. If something goes wacko seemingly out of the blue, sometimes restoring to an earlier point will solve the problem. For example, about two months after we acquired a new Dell laptop, the machine decided it could not connect to the web. Everything seemed OK hardware-wise. Eventually I tried System Restore, rolled back to the previous day, and then all was well. I still don’t know what caused the problem, but I know what fixed it.
For an excellent illustrated step-by-step tutorial on using System Restore, go to: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial56.html
System Restore is a valuable tool in your arsenal of PC fixes, but remember that it does nothing to help restore the loss of your data files. You need a good backup regimen for that.