Thank God for System Restore!

[Gary Richardson]

Nope, I use it in Administrator mode. It simply doesn't always restore.

What messages (if any) do you get when this happens? (be as specific as you can). Is it with any particular type of Restore Point? Any error codes given?

[chrishoggy]

I must admit system restore has failed on some systems I've fixed. It usually just sits there for hours at about 95% done (left one over night) , and never finishes the restore. Then when you have to reboot or switch off, you just get the restore failed on bootup. No errors or awt, just failed due to interruption in process.

[rondon]

I logged in today to gather some old info I needed unrelated to this post but thought I might have a look at what my old Nemesis chrishoggy was meddling with these days. wow... first thread I found in his profile led me here... and what luck! It was on a topic that the rat reported me as rude on (after he deleted his provoking side of the banter).

To bring anyone up to date on it I had started a thread on the Merits of RestoreIt here
and was soon bushwhacked..
But all that is in the past and I've moved on... and sadly away from RTP .

that said there are better ways for SOME of us to protect our systems. I used to be sold on RestoreIt and it never has let me down... not once in 4 years or so.. no matter what happened to the system.. and I'm bad when it comes to trying out downloaded software... visiting bad sites.. and running without security (although now that I'm running WinXP I do run the firewall).

I've gotten more than my share of viruses... and found lots of other ways to corrupt my machine. but thru it all I just had to tell RestoreIt to restore C: go make a pot of coffee and come back to a slick running windows with all my software, preferences and tweaks in place.

The one thing that nagged me though because I like to squeeze all the speed out of my homebuilt PC I could was that as with windows built in restore system (which is shut off) it slowed me down some while it was writing those incremental restore points which I never used (the secret is to keep the permanent restore point current).. RestoreIt doesn't allow you to just make that one restore point and shut it off though..
One day with some time on my hands I tried finding a better way... and presto! there it was made by the same company... I'm not sure if it is new or that I never saw it while there.

It's called DriveClone find it here And it does all that RestoreIt did for me but puts it on a disk.

The result is a faster machine and because I work with a lot of video files these days this is a godsend. or Manna from Allah if you lean that way.

Gary and his sidetwit came down on me over security at 1st so when I started my own thread I was careful to mention that RestoreIt works fine with security.... that I just had no use for it... preferring again the speed of running unfettered across the internet... relying on restoreIt to get me out of trouble.. bless them it always came thru.

There is some criteria to use RestoreIt the way I did.. much of it is the same with my new choice DriveClone... but it can be used just as they advertise on their site...
The one thing that must be present though is Pentium not AMD

With DriveClone I suppose there is no longer a need to partition the HardDrive (or have 2) however with one partition you will use more disks (hopefully DVDs).

I've always had mine partitioned though with my saved files off C: ... to newbies that's pretty much like having "my Documents" on a different partition, or hard drive for the fortunate.

I have lots of software installed and I still can use just a single DVD disk for backup...

Now no matter what happens, I'm 15 minutes from a fresh return to the image of C: I made ... all tweaked, all programs, and I even defragged C: before burning it..

Well Goodbye again.. I still stand by all that was said on this subject
RonDon


If you have something constructive to add to this topic it is welcome.

However if all you have returned to RTP for is to start up this old and worn out argument, then don't bother.

Any further posts by you on the topic of RestoreIt will be removed.

Gary

[rondon]

read without bias my post was on topic and constructive as they all were.

[chrishoggy]

read without bias my post was on topic and constructive as they all were.

Gary and his sidetwit

Not very constructive, but made me laugh anyway

[rondon]

I rest my case

[chrishoggy]

Anyway....

Just to add to what I said about system restore. I had to use it today, to fix a school class network of 10 laptops. All but 2 worked fine and the only thing I found different about those 2 was a hardware change. Both laptops had their wirerless adaptors changed/replaced, so will assume the hardware change had an effect on the restore.
Both froze at 98% and needed the new hardware removing for the restore to take. I can't say why this happened, as it shouldn't. But fact is, the restore worked with the new adaptors removed.

[kierandude]

i've never used system restore or any hdd restore programs. thats only because I keep my computer safe with av and firewall. then i use spybot adaware and a few others to keep it clean. i was always told it's better to stop these things happening, rather than fixing them after it's happened.

[Kraellin]

well, the real culprit in all this finally reared its ugly head. the c: drive was indeed going bad and has now completely died. for the last few days i've had boot-up problems, minor, but nonetheless odd. i always suspect a harddrive or power supply when this sort of thing starts to happen. today, i was just barely able to boot up in the morning and i suspected the drive. so, before going to work, i shut everything down. when i got home i booted up again and things were even worse. windows would just barely boot and was extremely slow. i also got some popups for 'new hardware wizard'. i recognized this again. what apparently happens is that when a drive is going bad, the bios and windows both have a very hard time loading. the cpu cycles go WAY up and there is a taxing of the power supply, and all this in turn plays havoc with the rest of the system.

wanting to not mess anything up, i attempted to turn the system off. this took about 2 hours because everything, including the mouse, was running super slow. but, it finally shut down.

i removed the drive i suspected, the c: drive, and booted up again and all was fine.

i also had another big clue on this. when booting up i saw one of the drives missing from the bios list and a bios warning. my pci ide/sata plugin card was one of the popups showing it wanted drivers. i think it must have been drawing the drivers from the old c: drive. and, when i managed to look at windows explorer, the data on c: was almost completely gone again.

so, this was pretty much a no-brainer that the c: drive had finally gone bad. you may also remember that i had backed this up recently and that c: isnt my windows drive anyways. this drive was also my oldest drive. so, all in all, nothing critical was lost here. it was a 40 gig drive and about time it was replaced with something a bit larger.

so, i consider this problem solved. i hope the computer thinks so too

[rondon]

Kraellin for what it's worth... with DriveClone you could have installed a new HDD and still use the restore disk(s).. for sure I'm not trying to rub salt in your wounds.. Just point out a merit.... I'm glad all's backed up
RonDon

[chrishoggy]

so, i consider this problem solved. i hope the computer thinks so too

You should know by now that computers never do as they are told

[creeduk]

Glad it work I was put off after one very excruciating experience. I created a restore point prior to a software install and a set of updates. Well the updates made things worse so I did a system restore, it came back up but I noticed an issue I had duplicated files all my system files had a second copy with (1) hmmm so I decided to undo the restore well now I had 3 system files and as a last try I picked an earlier restore point and ended up with...you guessed it 4 so I had file, then filename(1) then filename(2) and finally filename(3). At this point my hard drive was full so I had to search my C: drive for all files with the numbers (one set at a time) remove them. Then I fixed the update issue manually in the registry.

Also I found if you have a lot of programs installed the system restore takes up a lot of disk space. One day I watched the space left on my C just start dropping. I knew I had nothing running but yet I had less and less space available then it clicked, system restore was creating a restore point. So 12 compiling losing disk space and that bad experience of that restore I turned it off on all drives.

Now I have in the past had several good experiences but like all things it just takes one bad one. I now use a program that backups up my registry every restart and usually that is fine, for the OS you can always run SFC to replace corrupted system files then a restored good registry and I am back up and running.

[rondon]

As I say... quicker than defragging (and it is defragged).

[chrishoggy]

On a drive image size of less than 4 Gig, I'm quite sure it only takes 10 mins. But I doubt many people use so little of their drive capacity. And lets remember that all software updates would need to be downloaded and installed again after drive image is restored. And all user created data is lost once the image is restored. That is unless you create a new disc after each update, or once a week etc. Defrag/file cleanups/scan times don't bother me, as mine are all done when I'm in bed
Saying that, as an emergency recovery system, it works quite well .

PS: SelfImage does the same thing, and thats free There are quite a few free backup systems about. Few of them on the link below
http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilit...andimage.shtml

[rondon]

Starting with the last 1st:
PS: SelfImage does the same thing, and thats free : wink :
I'm all for free, open source software for sure, best of all it is a work in progress.
I read thru it's features and came away unsure if it's as simple as inserting the restore disk and rebooting. Is it so?

There are quite a few free backup systems about. Few of them on the link below
http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilit...andimage.shtml
That whole site looks interesting and I've bookmarked it for a leisurely browse.

And lets remember that all software updates would need to be downloaded and installed again after drive image is restored.
I suspect you never fully read my previous posts on installing all updates, tweaks, and preferences before creating a restore point/disk(s). Importantly with minimal prior online exposure to avoid malware. In light of the restore point now being mounted on a disk, malware is less of an issue on any future recovery disk I might make.. worse scenario I revert to and earlier backup disk.

And all user created data is lost once the image is restored.
Data and debris as well.... but all desired files are easily moved to that afore mentioned partition ...or 2nd hard drive for those who have one.
I choose a time when most projects are finished and little data remains on C: .. I fill my harddrive more often than daily but when everything has been burnt to DVD little remains to be transferred.

Defrag/file cleanups/scan times don't bother me, as mine are all done when I'm in bed
My computer is processing all night.

Saying that, as an emergency recovery system, it works quite well : wink : .
Yes! For sure, but that was why I originally tried sharing my process with my friends here at RTP. My contribution wasn't about recovery as much as using the tool for another purpose. It was all about building a fully functional restore point. One that is a pleasure to use, not dread or resignation. I seldom use mine to recover, but I do use it often as maintenance.
My first posts on the subject a year or more ago related the methods I had used and was open to ideas on how to improve upon it. I was trying to open a discussion not debate.
I'm not a professional computer tech, more of a "shade tree mechanic". I can build them and have never failed to fix one for acquaintances but often I don't really understand the technical aspects.
My Method isn't technical.. it's logic. It evolved naturally from the 1st time I realized I didn't have to settle for a sparse restoration. At first it was just PS and other software, then the preferences and tweaks and so on.
I found it interesting so it became somewhat of an amusement.. All the little things like building shortcuts to notes and files on the other partition and including those shortcuts in the restore point. I once browsed all photo folders to allow PS to create the thumbnails.. the little things. Another thing is to have all possible downloads and updates stored before building a fresh start restoration disk,
While I was working with photos the 2nd partition was the largest and all that data was stored there, easily accessible.

That is unless you create a new disc after each update, or once a week etc.
No, not once everything is included in the restore point, passwords, bookmarks and all that. the bookmarks btw can be exported then imported without ever visiting the site before making the disk. Another of the little things.

On a drive size of less than 4 Gig, I'm quite sure it only takes 10 mins. But I doubt many people use so little of their drive capacity.
To be clear here I have what is considered minimal these days an 80GB hard drive. It is partitioned with 50GB for C: and the rest for safe storage untouched by the restore.
I've attached a copy of my program list. I've always felt I have more installed than most.

Well happy Thanksgiving! to you Brits who didn't make the boat also.