System Restore just saved my tail...

[gballard]

While killing time today here at work...I decided to go to WindowsUpdate to see if there was anything out there. There was 2 critical updates so I decided to do the update. One of the updates was a service pack for the .Net framework and the other was something related to GDI+. They downloaded and installed and the GDI+ update caused a webpage to open and prompted me to let it run an ActiveX component to check for image applications that use GDI+. I let it do its thing then proceeded to let it restart. It came up to the login prompt and I logged into the machine like usual and that is when I noticed something seemed to be wrong. The login prompt went away and I was just left with blue background...nothing was happening at all. After maybe 5 minutes it came up with an error message related to the winlogin service giving errors and stuff. I then decided to boot into Safe Mode in an attempt to try to remove the update from Add/Remove Programs. Well wouldn't you know it...it didn't make an entry into Add/Remove Programs. I rebooted again and chose Safe Mode with Networking. I logged in again and this time I got prompted to choose whether to go into Safe Mode or choose Cancel and use System Restore to restore the machine back to a previous time. I had nothing to lose so I chose the System Restore. This is when all those system restore points that Spybot Search and Destroy REALLLLLYYY came in handy. Luckily I had just ran that yesterday so I was able to restore my machine to that time and I didn't really lose anything but the updates I had just installed....

 

[NetRyder]

Hehe, this is right opposite to the "System Restore is useless" thread that was created a few days ago, eh?

My personal experience with System Restore in XP has been mixed. It's usually worked as advertised for me if there were no major or complex changes made to the system - for example to go back after some software or driver botched up. Major problems still need a DriveImage partition restoration though.

Thankfully, I haven't had the need to use either for a long, long time - not once since I got my notebook actually. XP's been solid as a rock. =)

 

[a1ehouse]

My advice would be to buy something like VMware and install a version of XP to test on. This way you can run and install any app/update etc. and if it's stable then go ahead and install to your main rig. You can also create snapshots of the test system which you can revert back to should anything go tit's up. Simply beautiful!