Do you have enabled System Protection?

Reputation points? LOL... if only they were only given by people you help as opposed to mates or cronies (and I'm not saying everybody is affected by this buddy phenomena... but there's a lot of transparent backslapping!) who expect you to do the same for them...

The arguments in this thread are being taken too seriously LOL...

lol....yeah rep points are useless. I see people giving them for sharing wallpapers etc. Im a VistaPro over on vista forums, its changed my life lol.

But anyway to get back ontopic this thread was for if you used system restore and if not then why. You dont need to post if you use it, and you dont need to state why you use it.

Qdos said:

Then... the Acronis TrueImage 'Try and Decide' facility, for instance, isn't something you're familiar with then I'll have to presume?

Actually I am familiar with that application....and that functionality. I've been demoing and playing with the Acronis True Image Home 2010 application. My primary issue here is that this is something that you have to turn on before making the changes on your system. It also has the 5 minute continuous backups which would be great for some people. Also, True Image costs money...albeit not much ( I think it's $38 from NewEgg)....however not everybody has the extra cash to invest in these 3rd party apps.

Like I have said before, I'm certainly not against using 3rd party tools. And most do provide more functionality than what is built-in. But it would be a shame for somebody to turn it off in hopes of significant performance increases and then need it and not have it. So, I'd say if you haven't invested in 3rd party applications....my recommendation would be to leave the System Protection functionality enabled. I think it does more good than bad.

I've been using both SR and imaging for years and wouldn't do without either one.

Neither one is perfect given all the possible scenarios.

One issue with SR is control - can be a real space hog, especially Vista's version where it's harder to control the size.

Glad to see Windows 7 is back to using the "slider".

After reading this entire thread(sic) my use of SR will remain unchanged. That said, I think SR is a useful tool for people who are not into the inner workings of computers and need a quick fix program for when Murphys' Law takes effect. As for the folks that use SR instead of uninstalling programs, ever wonder why you are running out of harddrive space?

helmutcheese said:

OFF, its thrashes HDD's and that's a PIA even on quieter newer VRaptors (Raid 0), possibly not so much a big deal on SSD's.

I have a Auto Backup of all my Media etc to an external HDD if it all went wrong but as this install is 1 year old I would clean install.

System Restore is for when you mess up your PC not for uninstalling a normal bit of software you don't like, thats extreme.

I seriously doubt it removes all traces as neither did XP's or the failure in ME.

Better using a 3rd party uninstall program and then running Cleaner.

I leave System Restore on for customers PC's as they are n00bs and will someday need it, but its not there to uninstall a game when there done IMO.

It is a lot different than XP. It uses volume shadow copy and can remove pretty much all traces. But agree it is not meant to be a replacement for uninstalling software or rolling back drivers, but for disaster like scenarios.

It does use resources - it must copy the bytes you change in a file, but it is not so bad. And some third party defraggers may not play well with it.

I have it enabled on my kids' desktop systems, but not on my laptops. Instead I imaged backup HDDs with a clean install and working software setup for each. It takes me less than a minute to replace a laptop HDD.. not that I have too many problems, but IMO the best solution is the one that works in the least amount of time.

Well whatever anyone says about the merits of SR I have needed it on a couple of occasions, most recently when Norton registry cleaner removed stuff it shouldn't have. A few minutes and I was back to normal.

That does it for me.

Voted NO. I use an instant system recovery app for those needs