Using Windows' System Restore

Don Bradbury looks at the benefits and downsides of this facility

Though things seem to be getting generally better, no matter which version of Windows you use there may well come a time when you'll install something new and the system won't like it. You may face the dreaded BSOD - the "blue screen of death", as it's familiarly known. It may be a simple glitch, loading drivers incorrectly for a hardware addition, for example, or some more serious incompatibility. In the extreme, if the Windows Registry is corrupted it will have to be replaced.

Windows' System Restore is a way the Operating System (OS) can remember the configuration of your PC before a troublesome new addition, or other cause of a system crash, and let you reinstate it. Whether the "Restore Point" is automatically implanted on your hard disk, or manually added by yourself, a calendar of these events is saved and you can decide which of these stored versions of the Windows' system you want to recall.

To activate System Restore if it's not already operational, click Start, point to All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and then click on System Restore, or whatever is appropriate for your OS.

It's a simple task to add a restore point from the second option in the menu; just select the option and give the point a name. That would generally be a label to remind you of your next move, perhaps installing a new piece of hardware.

To restore a point, opt to "restore my computer to an earlier time" and a calendar of the restore point events is offered - either your own additions of the machine's automatic additions - to let you select the date you want to restore to. You may find several restore points on any one day, depending on your activities:

System Restore does not affect your data files, such as Word documents or Excel worksheets, or your browser history, drawings, IE favourites, or email. It will not delete any such documents that you may have created since you set up the Restore Point, but what it will do is restore the Registry, system files, and inner workings of the OS to it's former state, so that you should be able to progress forward while avoiding the mistake that caused the crash in the first place. However, if that goes wrong, you can reverse the restoration using the appropriate menu option.

If you find you cannot run Windows, try booting into safe mode, click the System Restore link, and then select the "Restore My Computer"' for the earlier time.

Backups

This is all well and good, and useful too, but in the worst scenario of a drive failure, fire, or major system corruption such that the drive cannot be booted, you will, of course, not be able to access the Restore Points. That's where System Restore leaves off and your last full drive backup takes over. Full drive backups enable you to restore a complete image of your computer at the time the backup was taken. Its own weakness, of course, is that any documents you have created since the last backup will be lost. However, all of your system configuration at that point, plus all of your work files to that date, should be restored for use.

These drive backups require their own software, usually, for optimum performance, outside of the Operating System, but they are your last and best resort to restoring a working computer and hence should never be ignored. And do check that they work before things go wrong, too; never rely on unproven backup/restore technology.

In conclusion

System Restore is a useful tool for those "oops, what have I done" moments we all meet now and then. But full drive backups are essential as well, and many will, between full backups, take copies of important documents onto removable media to cover the interim periods.

Remember, if you restore a Windows XP system to a point before you activated XP, the OS will forget that you activated it and you will have to reactivate the Operating System. If the system's Restore Point is beyond the thirty day period which Microsoft allow for activation, then you'll have to activate an XP installation again before proceeding.

Don Bradbury