A little known feature of Windows

[lostcarpark]

There is a little known (or at least previously little-known to me), but potentially very useful feature in Windows XP. It's called System Restore.

Given how Windows installations always seems to get messed up, it's rather surprising there doesn't seem to be more awareness. On the other hand, it's not something you want to be doing every day, so it might be better to keep it to yourself. Or join the sensible poeple in the Linux revolution.

What you probably don't know (well, I didn't know) is that XP takes a daily backup of important system files and hides them away on your hard disk. It will also do this when it recognises you're installing a new program. The amount of these it keeps depends on your hard disk size and how much space you allocate to it, but they seem to hang around for about three months on a reasonably sized drive.

So when everything goes wrong (well, perhaps not everything, but at least most non-catestrophic problems), you can go to All Program->Accessories->System Tools->System Restore. It will present you with a calendar highlighting all days that it took a backup. Select a highlighted day and it will list all backups taken on the day. Normally there will only be one, but if programs were installed it will extra ones, listed under the names of the installed programs. Select a restore point and ask it to proceed and it will return the OS to the way it was before that point. Note that any programs which were installed since that point will probvably have to be reinstalled.

The nice thing is that it only restores operating files. All your data should be unaffected (but don't think it's an excuse for not doing regular backups). It also has an undo feature, so you can return things to the messed up state if you decide you preferred that.

I wouldn't recommend doing a System Restore lightly. I would always look for a fix first. Googling on the error message (if there is one) often works wonders. While your data should be safe, there will always be some risk that everything will go horribly wrong and you'll be left with a system that won't boot. On the other hand, once you have tried less severe options, this function is a lot less painful than the options we had open to us in the past.

This proved handy recently when a friend called me a problem. All the thumbnails had disappeared from his My Pictures folder. The filmstrip would not display, and the picture viewer would not load (nor would the slideshow display). I know there are third party viewers (he has a couple), but he really wanted the built-in one back, After a bit of Googling nothing had made any difference, so I asked him when was the last time it definitely worked? Hi said before he went on holidays. So I opened System Restore, picked the day before he left, and told it to do its thing. A reboot later his thumbnails and previews were back and he was happy.

Comments

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Don't rely on it. Every time I've wanted to restore it goes through the motions then tells me it's not possible to restore from that particular backup. For every available backup I try. It was like it was taunting me deliberately.

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

Good point. So far it's done the trick the couple of times I've needed it. But I would consider it a last resort. Something that might save your bacon if you're in a jam, but you don't want to depend on it. And whatever else you do, make sure you've got a backup of your data files - there's always a possibility that it will manage to "restore" your PC to a state where it won't boot at all.