Xp Pro System Restore

People I talk to seem to have mixed feeling towards System Restore. Seems some people just don't trust it.

What are your views? Is it worth using or not? Maybe from a technical viewpoint.

All of my fellow techs use System Restore pretty frequently, but we all keep fresh image around in case something goes wrong. I'd be very interested in more technical information about how System Restore functions in XP Pro.

There is some info here but I want to know what people have eXPerienced - is it good or is it not.

I have used it with some degree of success- To note when I do a restore point- I always do the following- Reaply any update that was installed after the date on the restore point. I also do a full scandisk- mycomputer- find drive- right click- choose properties- Tools (tab) then Scandisk check now- checkmark both boxes- and reboot. as soon as that check is done I then do a defrag just to make sure evertything is smooth.

The one thing to remember is that should you get a virus on your system- before you attempt to remove it you have to disable the system restore- so the Antivirus software has to have access to the file store to disinfect it.

id rather format and reload..

makes me wonder - what would be missing - what apps would be broken

the reporting of what its doing is not thorough enough for me to trust it

Should be a poll here - Is System Restore good or evil

haha

System Restore:

- Good
- Evil
- Vague
- Saved my *!

Saved my *, when I least expected it. Consider it a form of insurance.

Catatonic wrote:

Saved my *, when I least expected it. Consider it a form of insurance.

Same here.  It's like an airbag for your computer.  You certainly don't want to go testing it's effectiveness but it might prevent some serious damage.

Unfortunately, it can have harmful effects similiar to an airbag.  Remember how Blaster got backed up into the System Restore folder?

I don't use System Restore, so I turned it off. I do not have apps installed that take more than a couple of minutes to reinstall.

1) If my computer breakes down, it's a sign telling me I've messed up too much and not just one thing. In that case I rather do a clean install, however that takes quite some time. I need a clean install once a year or so.

2) Because I need a clean install only once a year I'm not willing to sacrifice the amount of disk space System Restore requires.

3) I make backups of things that are important to me, so a full system crash (if I accidentily throw my computer through the window for example) doesn't hurt me (well, my data) that much.