[Ham-Computers] System restore in Win XP pro

[jeff]

On Sun, 2006-07-09 at 11:00 -0500, Brian K. Gaskamp wrote:
> I was messing with it last night and at least got it to where it boots up 
> and did a defrag, etc.

great!



> It has a few others problems I'll have to bring up later.

please do.  it's easier to troubleshoot with more information.


> 
> BUT I can't get it to do a system restore, any suggestions, comments.

What, if anything, did you find wrong with it?


Is there any information on the machine that's critical?  If not, you
can always blow the machine out and reinstall.  Or just do an XP
reinstall (either over the system or instead - I find over the system
generally fixes the problem).

Have you tried booting into Safe Mode?  If there's a driver conflict,
this is the place to find it.

It's possible System Restore is corrupted or was turned off before.  I
don't find it tremendously useful - your mileage may vary.

There are also a ton of great utilities to fix Windows when it goes
astray.  A lot of them are `live cd's', meaning that you boot to the cd,
which fires up an operating system that resides on the cd - not on your
machine.  This allows you to at very least get the important data off.
Search for Emergency Rescue or Emergency Boot cd.


Another GREAT live cd requires a bit more work - it's the Knoppix
(linux) live cd.  Unfortunately you have to learn a bit of linux to use
it for rescue (you don't have to learn much to use it as an OS, as it
boots up into a graphical environment that anybody who uses Windows can
use).


Good luck,
jeff