Thank God for System Restore!

[Kraellin]

well, i booted up windows this morning and found i'd lost some parts of windows. the boot message said i'd lost a 'profile'. not having any idea what profile i'd lost, i rebooted and it came up the same way. half or more of my desktop icons were missing, i was back in the windows xp default desktop mode (i normally use classic mode) and internet explorer was missing ALL my favorites i'd imported.

at first i thought i had a virus or something, but that would have been a strange virus. but when i began to review what i'd been doing yesterday, everything was fine, seemingly, when i shut the computer off last night. but, i did recall that filter forge had crashed on me. but it crashed in an odd way, leaving filter forge still running...seemingly. when i tried to do anything in it, it crashed immediately again. i did this again and it crashed again. now, i shld have known better than to have done this. i messed up my registry once before trying to keep going with an app after it's reported a crash. i shld have just killed filter forge right off and restarted it. but i didnt. but nothing seemed wrong. windows was still working and everything looked ok.

so today, the crash effect showed up. apparently something got corrupted in the registry and registry changes dont show up till you reboot. so, that pretty much had to be it.

the next question is what to do about it. well, i had to go to work, so i had a bit of time to think about it. when i got home, i simply went to system restore, picked a time shortly before the crashes and let it do its thing. everything came back up just fine! so, kudos to microsoft for that one! system restore is one of the best things they ever did for windows... period!

so, here's two tips for you. when an application crashes, clear the application completely. dont try to save it or keep using it even if it 'seems' ok. kill the thing and start again!

and the second tip is, system restore is actually fairly smart. it also has 3 types of restore points, the ones you manually set, 'system' restores, which windows sets periodically (not sure how often, but i had about 6 set so far this month), and a full, back to install specs restore. i hadnt manually set a restore point for weeks, but like i said, i had several system restore points this month. i just picked the most recent, yesterday, and let that one run. i couldnt recall exactly when i had crashed the machine, but i figured if the restore point from yesterday didnt work, i could use the one from two or three days ago. apparently, the one from yesterday is fine! so, amen to that!

so, if anyone ever tells you to turn off system restore, 'you dont need it', 'it's just a hog that no one ever uses', 'it takes up too much system memory and disk space', just smile knowingly and leave it running! it's one of the best things microsoft ever did for windows!

[patriciakay]

Totally agree with you Craig...System Restore is wonderful...I have used it on a couple of occasions...wouldnt be without it!!!

Patricia....

[mistermonday]

Craig, you got lucky this time - it doesn't always work or fully restore. If you want to be 100% safe, image your drive or partitions with something like Symantecs Ghost 10 (formerly PowerQuest Drive Image).
Regards, Murray

[raniday]

My experience with System Restore is that it only works when it's not vital. I still go to it occasionally, but there's like a 50-50 chance that it will go through the whole process of "restoring", reboot, and then tell me it couldn't make any changes. Glad it worked this time for you, Craig.

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Cat,

The reason System Restore didn't work for you on those occasions could be that you were running from a non administrator account. System Restore can only be run from an administrator account.

For more info on using System Restore, read http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...w_03may19.mspx

Click on the links at the top RHS for further info.

[Kraellin]

i do recall system restore not working once or twice. this was usually when windows was very badly corrupted or when a piece of hardware was going bad, and that's not the fault of system restore.

yes, i do agree that something like Ghost is the best way to be safe. i just havent put it back on my system yet since my computer replacement. it's always one of those things that i know i shld do, but always put off, often till it's too late.

but i will stick by my original statement; system restore is one of the best utilities microsoft ever put on windows.

[Kraellin]

lol, i take it all back. i shld have remembered my motto, 'i hate windows'. to keep this shorter than the actual events, i've lost my c: drive. now, if you followed my earlier threads about losing my old computer and buying a new one, you know that it got set up with the system drive as K:, not C: (yeah, weird, i know and it wasnt me that set that up). so, losing c: now isnt as bad as it might first sound.

basically, another crash caused a blue screen of death and when it rebooted, windows decided that it needed to run CHKDSK to make sure the system was ok. except, it ran it on c:, thinking it was the system drive? i dont know. but it ran it on c:. and, apparently, still thinking it was the system drive, it decided that just about everything on c: was bad... again, i dont really know, but when it was done it returned an error message saying there was enough disk space to copy the files to, so it deleted them all...or, it simply left them open or something. again, i'm not sure. but it went ahead and loaded the rest of windows and c: was not only empty but it told me it needed to be re-formatted and couldnt access it any further. cute.

so, i've spent the day looking for a file recovery program. i tried a couple of demos and the files are there and can be recovered, but being demo versions they wouldnt copy the files back to another drive.

so, yes, i shld have installed ghost and done a backup. see, i told you i get caught on this. lol.

after looking at various log files apparently this problem goes back to before the filter forge crash. there was a bad sector/block on one of the drives... i think the old c: drive. also, part of the problem with CHKDSK may have been caused by the old version of windows still residing on the c: drive and CHKDSK may have seen that and assumed that was the system drive, though if it did, that's pretty bad programming, since none of that was in the registry any more.

at any rate, i've now got two problems; i still need to recover the files on the c: drive and i've got a persistent heavy cpu usage thing going on that is causing a stuttering with anything i do on this computer. it runs ok for a few seconds and then pauses for a second or two and then continues again ok. a couple of processes (not services) are running heavy cpu usage, system idle process is running about 90 to 99% and SYSTEM was running fairly heavy for a while also, though that one seems to have slowed a bit.

i've actually got the c: drive backed up with ghost, but it's from the old system and ghost isnt currently installed. i dont know if installing ghost on this new system will retrieve those backups that come from a different registry and, i dont know if i can access individual files from those backups or if i have to recover the whole thing, which then might try to restore the old registry and that would be nothing but confusion on confusion. so, i'm a bit lost on that. i've actually never had to retrieve any ghost backups before, so i have no idea how smart it is.

so, you may all now laugh, or sneer if that's your preference, and tell me, i told you so

[Kraellin]

at this point, about all i can do is laugh. i started up my machine again this morning and decided that i'd just let windows do its thing again. so, it wanted to run CHKDSK again. apparently it was still not happy with my system. i had debated whether or not i'd let this do this or not. i suspected before i turned the machine on that it might want to do this. i let it do it. it took a while but when it was finished, windows booted up normally and my c: drive was back. i'm afraid i will never understand windows. i havent fully checked everything and i think i lost some files but it seems at this point to be minor, whatever it was.

the last time i had this much trouble with a drive and a boot-up sequence, the drive itself was going bad. that may be what's going on here too. this may be the early stages of the drive dying. so, i'll be backing things up from that drive that i want to save... just in case.

for now, everything seems ok. the stuttering is gone. the cpu cycles are back to normal and the files seem to be mostly ok. quite odd. i can only wonder what other surprises might be in store from this whole cycle of events. i'm begining to get a bit paranoid with windows and it blowing up somehow when i most need it. it would be nice to be able to trust one's operating system to operate.

[chrishoggy]

Like I've said before, get yourself a copy of knoppix live CD or DVD. Bang it in your CD ROM and boot up. Presto, you have full access to all your files on C: and can copy them to a backup HDD No worrying about what may happen to files if you try to recover windows, or if windows starts playing up .

[Gary Richardson]

Too much going on here to make even a guess at the reason, so I won't try.

But I can give you one bit of info.

system idle process is running about 90 to 99%

This is normal. Your processor operates a whole lot faster than anything else on your computer, so most of the time it sits idle. There are very few processes that will stress your processor in any way.

System Idle is not a process as such in as much as it does not have an executable program associated with it, it is just an indication of how much the processor is not doing. The higher the percentage the less stressed your processor is.

[CJ Swartz]

Craig --

1. I am happy that your system is today back in working order, more or less. I know the relief when it's working again after a problem, and the relief from thinking "I have another chance to save stuff before something BAD happens again!"

2. None of this sounds like "normal" Windows problems (translated - "It hasn't happened to me...yet"); all of this sounds both serious and ominous. Wouldn't it be worth your while to have a tech work on it -- friend or hired help? Just a thought...

[Kraellin]

thanks guys, i appreciate the support.

i've copied c: over to another drive now. i think i'll just wipe it and re-format now. one log file says there's a bad sector or block. so a clean slate is probably best here. if the drive is going bad it'll be best if there's little on it to have to contend with.

chris, i'm not sure the knoppix thing would work. i think the FAT (or whatever ntfs calls the equivalent) was screwed up when chkdsk messed it up. so, not sure the files would show up even in dos or a live linux read.

thanks, gary. didnt know that. i really dont know what happened in all this. it usually takes me about a year to get a computer fully grooved in

c.j., thanks. i'm rather stubborn when it comes to this stuff. the philosophy is, if i own it, i maintain it/fix it, or i throw it away. hehe, ok, that doesnt always work but it sort of is how i feel about computers. consequently, i'm in here looking for solutions rather than taking it out to the shop. i learn more this way and hopefully that keeps me from breaking things worse than i do or at least makes it easier to fix when i do break something

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Craig,

If you're thinking about doing a re-format, try reading this.

http://spyware-free.us/tutorials/reformat/] (courtesy of wng_z3r0).

Its aimed at guys with a severely Malware infected machine, but most of what's written there will be of use.

[Kraellin]

thanks, gary. i've added that page to my favorites. wish i'd had that a few years ago but, all i'll be doing here is re-formatting c: and c: doesnt have windows on it (well, it still has parts of the old windows, before the new computer). c: isnt my system drive any more. windows is on k:. so, all i'll be doing is the one partition and i'll just do it from windows\manage... when i do it. that's one of the features i like about xp too; you can re-format from within windows. i'll probably not do it right away, either. i'll probably just de-frag the drive first and see if i get any more logs saying anything about a bad sector or block.

one interesting thing of note yesterday was, when i hit tried to copy my old windows folder, the machine hiccuped on something and reboot itself.

it also wouldnt copy certain files and folders of old windows\documents and settings. apparently microsoft has locked some things down very tightly. i think it was the 'all users\application data\microsoft\crypto' folder with some windows keys in it or something. apparently microsoft doesnt want you copying these folders... anti-piracy?? i wonder if i'll even be able to delete those?

after the de-frag i'll probably let things run for a while and see if the drive is going to screw up or not and go from there. i'll also be erasing old junk off there just as a general clean-up. i'm such a pack-rat; i think i have stuff on there going back to the old win95 days

[raniday]

Hi Cat,

The reason System Restore didn't work for you on those occasions could be that you were running from a non administrator account.

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