Do you have enabled System Protection?

[BugOutMachine]

Of course I create System Restore Points prior to any major install or update. I also use Hardware DEP for ALL programs without a hitch in Windows 7. The interesting thing is that when I used DEP on Vista it would create major headaches for me with my ATI software and a few other programs. But under Win7 these same programs work flawlessly without the need to create any exceptions! Yayyyy!

 

[MacGyvr]

I already stated why for my scenario !

I do not want to listen to my VRaptors seeking randomly so I kill System Restore and Indexing (which I do not use anyhow).

The new VRaptors are not that loud over older ones but I have a Side Window Panel in my PC case and its not as sound proof as a Metal Side Panel.

Also System Restore has never been anywhere near perfect so I would rather simply run my Backup if I messed up my PC that much but in 1 year (this install) I have never bricked it as Vista (and Win 7) is hard to brick, XP ain't.

Peeps have got to respect others if they want it ON or OFF.

I do not want it on but will not flame someone for having it on unlike some will but I expect the same courtesy in return.

CCleaner and Tuneup Utils can remove 99% of left behind crap if something goes wrong.

System Restore absolutely would NOT be the cause of a hard drive "seeking randomly." If you have this problem, something else is wrong on your system.

Also, how would you know if System Restore "has never been anywhere near perfect" if you turn it off immediately? It seems odd that you would preach so hard against something you don't even use.

I've used System Restore literally hundreds of times on my own and customer's machines. Yes, on rare occasions, it won't restore, but when it works, it has NEVER caused a problem of it's own, and has almost always resolved the original problem.

Please have some documented facts to back up your claims before you plant in the heads of other readers that System Restore won't work for them.

 

[dave1812]

Hard drive space is cheap and plentiful, so I keep System Restore enabled. It's saved me from having to do an OS reinstall more than once on Vista and on 7 (already!).

 

[reghakr]

System Restore absolutely would NOT be the cause of a hard drive "seeking randomly." If you have this problem, something else is wrong on your system.

Also, how would you know if System Restore "has never been anywhere near perfect" if you turn it off immediately? It seems odd that you would preach so hard against something you don't even use.

I've used System Restore literally hundreds of times on my own and customer's machines. Yes, on rare occasions, it won't restore, but when it works, it has NEVER caused a problem of it's own, and has almost always resolved the original problem.

Please have some documented facts to back up your claims before you plant in the heads of other readers that System Restore won't work for them.

I have to agree there. If anything it would be the indexing (which I turn off myself) that would be causing the hard drive "trashing"

For me,. installing software on a daily basis,. it's great. Even though you use RevoUinstaller and CCleaner, there are still leftovers. With System Restore there are no leftovers at all.

 

[smarteyeball]

No,,i can usually fix whatever goes wrong,,if not just do re install,,its a learning experience..lol

Been there, fixed that. I'm all for lazy now

EDIT:

And unless space is at a premium, there is no performance hit to having it enabled.

 

[helmutcheese]

@ MacGyvr, There is NOTHING wrong with my System.

System Restore unlike in XP writes far more than before as its more evolved.

Its one of the things this very forum has in its Tuts for HDD performance.

There is too many "experts" here that seem to think they know better than the person using their PC.

Some of you just need get over the fact we do not all do what you do and that's the end of it, so do not be so quick to tell others there PC is not right.

How do you know ( as I have not stated) that I ain't ever ran System Restore for long periods even years on ME+XP+Vista ?

Stop making assumptions and your tone of posting sucks and I am giving my input as topic asks for.

I am not telling others to do the same unlike you so that makes you a HYPOCRITE.

Your post only makes you look totally clueless and ignorant.

 

[pparks1]

There is too many "experts" here that seem to think they know better than the person using their PC.

Of course, to be fair, each of us has our own unique levels of experience. While some of us dabble at home, others support hundreds or thousands of workstations professionally for a living. Some of use are server admins and network engineers. I've experienced things on 1 particular PC that cannot be duplicated on other machines...so if this machine was the only machine that I spent a lot of time on...my views on a particular topic might be skewed drastically.

At the end of the day, as long as we aren't personally attacking or flaming each other for our views I think the community benefits. Sometimes it takes a number of counterarguments and different viewpoints to determine that something else might possibly be misbehaving or configured incorrectly.

 

[stew2]

There is too many "experts" here that seem to think they know better than the person using their PC.

Exactly right. I use my pc in a different way to the avarege user. I use virtualbox to launch windows xp and test all software in that and also use it for web browsing within Greenborder etc. My windows 7 doesnt even have a web browser on it lol.

What this means is that my main operating system doesnt get trashed by using dodgy apps and the internet eg. cookies, viruses, spyware etc etc....

If you want to use your pc a different way from me and fill it with junk files, cookies, dodgy apps, viruses, spyware etc and therefore have a need for system restore then continue to use it. I dont need it so i wont ever use it.

 

[pparks1]

If you want to use your pc a different way from me and fill it with junk files, cookies, dodgy apps, viruses, spyware etc and therefore have a need for system restore then continue to use it. I dont need it so i wont ever use it.

And I don't think that anybody is going to try to convince "YOU" otherwise.

I think those of us posting in favor of system protection are for those who don't sandbox everything and do rely on their 1 computer or 1 OS to pretty much do everything for them. And I think those who operate like that are more the majority.

I think our hope is(at least my hope is) that somebody who actually could benefit from system restore doesn't just blindly turn it off because they believe it will wildly improve their system performance or stop their disk from thrashing simply because they read it somewhere. I think we mostly are in agreement that this isn't the best reason to disable this feature...although there might be other reasons (as you stated in your thread) that somebody might prefer to just turn it off (although there might not be any tangible benefit/improvement by doing so).

 

[Qdos]

Why use a system that is so primitive, and can harbour viruses which can negate repairs carried out on a system if system restore is active? Use a third party disk imaging software option instead, not only is it better, you get far greater control and infinitely better security, choice of backup media, emergency boot media... etc, etc

 

[dave1812]

Why use a system that is so primitive, and can harbour viruses which can negate repairs carried out on a system if system restore is active? Use a third party disk imaging software option instead, not only is it better, you get far greater control and infinitely better security, choice of backup media, emergency boot media... etc, etc

How does imaging software guarantee that no viruses are being "harbored"??

 

[Qdos]

How does imaging software guarantee that no viruses are being "harbored"??

I didn't say that... but how many times is it necessary to turn off system restore after doing virus repairs because the system restore feature can restore the virus to your computer in a flash...

Viruses can't just jump from, say, an Acronis Backup to your Windows installation...

 

[pparks1]

How does imaging software guarantee that no viruses are being "harbored"??

I didn't say that... but how many times is it necessary to turn off system restore after doing virus repairs because the system restore feature can restore the virus to your computer in a flash...

Viruses can't just jump from, say, an Acronis Backup to your Windows installation...

Now I am confused. If you utilized Acronis images to restore your machines...wouldn't it also hold true that after virus repairs that you would have to dump your old backups as using them to restore your system could restore the virus to the computer in a flash??? In fact, I would think with system images the problem would actually be far worse as this is restoring data files and such...rather than just the drivers and DLL's...which usually aren't the infected bits.

I do use a "system image" from time to time with my machine. Usually I take one right after install and the base drivers are installed and the machine is activated. But that is usually it...with respect to images. But in the event that a driver update hoses some functionality and a system uninstall doesn't quite cut it...a "system restore" point is usually more effective as a quick solution than backup up any new data, restoring the "system image" and reinstalling apps and moving that new data back.

 

[Qdos]

Who makes infected images using, say, Acronis TI?

I don't. Very few others will. Reason being is that you choose when to do it.

Unlike system restore...

Q. Can you boot from a Microsoft System Restore disk and reinstall your entire OS?

A. Nope.

Q. Does System Restore use a separate drive or partition for heightened data integrity?

A. Nope again.

Q. Can a virus which was incorporated into a System Restore archive resurrect itself to bite you in the a$$?

A. Yep.

I rest my case...

 

[helmutcheese]

How can using an image restore the virus if you made the image on a 100% clean/running well machine ?

 

[dave1812]

How can using an image restore the virus if you made the image on a 100% clean/running well machine ?

that's an assumption that is too often faulty...just ask the person who thought they had a virus-free image of their drive.

 

[pparks1]

Who makes infected images using, say, Acronis TI?

Somebody who doesn't yet know that their machine is infected. Even the most rigorous of AV products are unaware until a new enough definition file is released.

Playing Devils Advocate a bit and reversing the thought process

Q. Can a virus which was incorporated into a TI archive resurrect itself to bite you in the a$$?
A. Yep.

Q. Can a TI backup be used to simply reverse what 1 application did without having to restore your whole OS and recover any data between now and then.
A. Nope

I think my point is that each system provides different value to the end user. Honestly, best course of action to me would be to use both systems...and that is exactly what I do. Like I said, 1 image that puts me back to 100% clean and 100% vanilla...system protection to warrant against that isolated incident causing me some grief at any moment.

I'm not arguing against the use of other technologies. However, I'm not convinced that having system restore turned on is causing me any hardships other than a small amount of disk space which is easily afforded. So, I'm arguing that in my opinion there isn't a great reason for disabling it. At the end of the day, it's just my opinion. Your mileage indeed will vary.

 

[pparks1]

Who makes infected images using, say, Acronis TI?

Somebody who doesn't yet know that their machine is infected. Even the most rigorous of AV products are unaware until a new enough definition file is released.

Also, I've been fortunate enough to make a system change on a Monday which resulted in another application suffering an issue which wasn't discovered for 3-4 days since I didn't use the other application. So, I could have easily ran a TI backup on Tuesday assuming that all was well...and simply didn't know about it.

Playing Devils Advocate a bit and reversing the thought process

Q. Can a virus which was incorporated into a TI archive resurrect itself to bite you in the a$$?
A. Yep.

Q. Can a TI backup be used to simply reverse what 1 application did without having to restore your whole OS and recover any data between now and then.
A. Nope

I think my point is that each system provides different value to the end user. Honestly, best course of action to me would be to use both systems...and that is exactly what I do. Like I said, 1 image that puts me back to 100% clean and 100% vanilla...system protection to warrant against that isolated incident causing me some grief at any moment.

 

[Qdos]

Can't agree with anyone who says System Restore is a decent alternative to third party disk imaging tools, nor with those who don't know the concepts of making bare metal backups, building on them stage by stage, and ensuring you don't have nasties aboard...

Perhaps this sort of mentality will enable them to go around believing System Restore makes them bomb proof, when the truth is that it does little more than bloat the systems primary partition and can serve as a vehicle to cache viruses on the same partition as the actual operating sytem... sheesh... :sarc:

 

[pparks1]

Maybe if Microsoft had labeled the name of the tool, "Critical System Components restore" instead we would all get along.

The name is a bit misleading, as it will not, nor can it restore an entire OS in the event of a massive failure. As can be done with any imaging tool.