System Restores!!! Ahhhhhh:-(

[digitaljohnny]

I am having issues with the System Restores.

I restored the system before installing a bunch of software, and prior to installing some Samsung monitor drivers. Well, the drivers didn't work and only ended up messing up my display.

I didn't Add/Remove Software or delete anything from Windows Explorer.

Well, I did a System Restore and re-booted. The software that I installed dissappeared. There was no visible trace of it anywhere on the system. I understand that. So, I re-installed the software again. Now I find that it installed it itself along with the prior install, but called itself Adobe(2). So, I now have Adobe and Adobe(2) showing up on my system.

Does the installed application remain on the system after a prior date restore is done or is it removed? Do I have to go back through all of the prior restores and purge out the undesired applications? Gosh I am irritated at this.

It is making a mess of my hard-drive, and I cannot even find some of this other stuff because it seems to hide things in unaccessible folders.

Any help or advice?

Regards,
John

 

[Lonman]

No, XP actually deletes a lot of what was in these folders, like the .exe's, and cleans the registry. In affect, that extra folder is just taking up space now. Determine which one is the old one and you can safely delete it.

 

[digitaljohnny]

Follow up

Is there a safe way to do this? I seem to have done about four system restores from various dates. Some forward and some backward. I think I know the user profile that I am using now. But is there a way to be for sure? Is there somewhere I can go to see the name of the profile I am using?

If I goto a dos prompt it seems to fire-up in the profile name of the current user.

Such as:

C:\Windows\System\User00001>

Any ideas on this one? Is this how I can tell?

Thanks,
John

 

[Lonman]

Not quite sure what you're asking about user profile. Do you mean logging in under each profile you did restores from?
It really shouldn't matter, these old program folders will be in the "Program Files" folder of your root drive, no matter which profile you log in under that won't change.

I experienced this too with restore and just searched out the folders, using Windows Explorer, that didn't have any .exe's in them and then deleted the whole folder. If you have plenty of disk space then you really don't need to worry about them, they're harmless. You can leave them or delete them. Just be careful not to delete a "live" program(s) folder. I kept going back and forth from the start menu and the "program files" folder to see what i still had installed. Hope that helps.

 

[Kylie]

In regard to your comments about labels ie: folder[2] etc
Its my understanding that the "active" folder is always named as it should be - the "get the hell off my system" folders are given suffixes, which are safe to ditch

K