System Restore Is the Easiest Way to Fix Your Computer if You Screwed It Up For Those Who Aren’t Aware of This
A good friend of mine was not aware of the System Restore feature on his computer so I’m putting up this blog on System Restore in case there are others who aren’t aware of it either. Honestly, I thought everyone knew about System Restore, but I guess not everyone else does, so I decided to put up a post on it here.
To begin with System Restore is only on XP and Vista Systems as far as I know. All my computers are XP by choice and if you have Vista, I’m guessing most of what I’m saying is applicable to Vista but just to make sure I’m correct, I’ve put a link for using System Restore for Vista in the last paragraph of this article.
Basically, if you screwed something up on your computer, there is a way to undo your screw-up most of the time with System Restore. Before you read further, System Restore Does Not Always Work, specifically sometimes it may come back with a message that it can not restore to the point (date and time) you want restored. When that happens, you are no worse off then when you started with. But System Restore has worked for me and corrected my screw-ups about 75% of the time.
Essentially the way system restore works is, your computer creates various restore point automatically. Each time you install a new software program for instance it will create a restore point in all likelihood as well as daily restore points called checkpoints just for regular use. You can manually create restore points as well. To see this for yourself for XP computers go into Accessories then System Tools then System Restore and you will see an option to (manually) create a restore point as well as Restore my Computer to an Earlier Time which will show you the current system restore points your computer has.
OK let’s just say you screwed the computer up and you want to Fix it without losing any previous programs, files or anything. You want to use System Restore and see if that will Fix everything back to how it was before your computer got screwed up. So you go to Accessories then System Tools then System Restore and “Restore My Computer to An Earlier Time” and click Next. You then look for the closest Restore Point before Your Computer Screwed Up. This is fairly easy to do as the Restore Points usually note any action. The main thing is you should use the latest System Restore Point before you did the action to screw the computer. Now continue and press next, close any open programs and just continue on with the process as it tells you to by clicking next.
Windows will then be shut down and eventually after a few minutes will reboot with a message saying that either your computer was restored to the Restore Date or it wasn’t able to Restore It. Until that message goes on the computer do not touch your keyboard at all or the power button. If it is Restored, the problems that you had should be fixed. I would recommend that if it is fixed,before you do anything else, if you have any programs that correct errors in the registry or computer, you run that first, as an additional safeguard. I use 1 Click Maintenance, Registry Mechanic and Advanced Registry Optimizer which I wrote about in this blog, Click Here If your computer can not Restore it to that date, then everything is the same as before and you’ll have to find another way to fix it but at least you tried. As I said, the odds are in your favor using System Restore.
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