Topic: System Restore Question

[chorleydave]

Hi everybody.

As I use Win98SE, I have never had any experience of System Restore, which I believe comes with later Windows operating systems.  I am currently faffing about with one of the spare PCs I have managed to collect along the way and it has Windows ME loaded.  My question is, if I stop StateMgr (Restore's engine) from loading on Windows startup, can I still set a restore point manually, or will it disable system restore completely?

I am asking this because I might give this spare PC to a bright kid I know, who comes from a very poor one parent household, and I think that System Restore might be useful, given that kids load anything onto computers without giving any thought as to the possible consequences.  Additionally, although I know ME is not an OS to recommend, the PC only has a P233MMX and 32megs of RAM, so anything later might not run, or at best will run at a crawl.

Thanks.

[Sandra]

If its not loaded I dont think it can add any more restore points Dave.
Why do you want to stop it from start up items  
Its really as essential as an AV and firewall as a safety feature.

[chorleydave]

Thanks, Sandra.

As well as the possible slowing of the system, I was also concerned about the amount of disk space that System Restore uses, as the PC only has a 1.2GB hard drive.  The default settings have a minimum of 200MB and a maximum of 400MB disk space usage.  However, I have just found how to change this in Regedit so, after I edited the values, it now has a minimum of 20MB and a maximum of 100MB.

Not only that, but I have read quite a number of articles that suggest that Restore can actually cause more trouble than it is worth, particularly if you get a virus and then, at a later date, have to do a restore for another reason, it can actually put back the virus.  The recommended course of action seems to be to disable restore, reboot (to flush out the restore points) and then re-enable it after removing the virus.  Like most Microsoft "improvements", it seems a lot of trouble for very little benefit.  I have managed on 98SE without System Restore for years, and on the couple of occasions I have had a problem, running Scanreg from a C: prompt has done the job easily.

There are thousands of references to this "flaw".

http://www.pchell.com/virus/systemrestore.shtml

[TR]

Dave,

Have a look Here

I ordered 1 for my daughters laptop which is running win 98, hope it is helpful.



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Hook

[chorleydave]

Thanks for that, Hook.  I ordered and received the disk some time ago, and very useful it is too.

After sleeping on it, I decided to format the HD and load 98SE, as ME seems to be nothing more than a bloated version of 98SE, with no benefits.

[Hiatus]

nothing more than a bloated version of 98SE, with no benefits.[/b]

 

I'm appalled that you would talk about Windows ME that way!

[chorleydave]

I believe that Bill Gates, when asked quite recently if there was anything he really regretted doing, replied that releasing Windows ME was his only regret.

[Sandra]

I think that ME was to Bill Gates what the Edsel was to Henry Ford, maybe in another 50 years people will look on it as being quaint and a little eccentric, like the Edsel