[SOLVED] have you successfully used system restore

[MJS WARLORD]

Ok so the title says it all.

I started using pc's in 2002 , i have used xp , 7 , vista and for the last 3 years windows. I have used various anti virus software over the years and for the last 4 years used kaspersky paid for version.
I have tried av off and restart in safe mode . I know that system restore will not always get you out of a mess but the thing is , the only time i had any kind of success with system restore way way back when i was using xp.
I always get the a message to say windows encountered a problem and no files were changed.

 

[kerberos_20]

system restore will usualy not fix anything (corrupted registry, etc), so i use windows image backups, which can fix anything normal system restore cant repair
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-back-up-and-restore-an-image-file-of-windows-10

 

[Colif]

System restore is useful if you recently installed drivers that are bad, as it is meant to run whenever drivers are installed and can be used to roll system back to before them. I have used it for that after people stupidly use Driver Booster to update drivers.

It does keep a record of registry so sometimes it can be used to revert mistakes such as setting an entire hdd as your documents library

That is about the extent of its usefulness. I have never found it useful for fixing nebulous Windows problems, I used to try it in the XP, Vista days but it failed to help so often I would just clean install instead now.

Backups work better as suggested above.

 

[MJS WARLORD]

Hi colif thanks for your comments , i do a clean install once a year because no matter what programs you use to clean out rubbish you can never be sure that they get rid of all the rubbish.

I have eula notepad items , some install res dll , install vc_red , and 2 items marked install , they have computer symbol on them , i have no idea what would happen if i ran them and the strange thing is they were made before my pc was custom buit for me.

Many years ago when 60gb hdd was considered huge i set a restore point and as you know every restore point uses memory , the pc got stuck in a loop creating god knows how many restore points till i ran out of memory.

 

[Colif]

probably not ideal to randomly run files if you don't know what they are.

Creation dates on files can be lies, there are parts of windows where the files are either dated in the 1970's or far in future. AV companies do similar tricks to avoid being deleted.

System restore mostly hidden now, I very much doubt Microsoft will move it from control panel at any stage, they trying to ignore it exists. They don't promote it, you need to know its there. Sort of like Screensavers. Microsoft are slowly moving features out of control panel into settings but I expect one day System restore will just not exist at all.

Only if you search for "create a restore point" will you easily find it now.

I remember having 2 x 30gb hdd. Now i have so much space i don't know what to do with it.

 

[kerberos_20]

system restore is in settings already, under backup settings, it will open windows win 7 image backup tool, its not hidden, it just says "if u created backup in windows 7 blah blah" so ya its not promoted but it still works flawlessly, u can set it to monthly backups, which will also do some periodical system restore points, so u can try restore point before goin for image backup