What's a good 3rd party system restore program?

J

John32118

New Member
Long story short, my new hp vista home premium sp1 won't revert to previous restore points. I have spend several hours reading about this problem and it appears that I can either use a third party program or restore in safe mode which only works sometimes.

Is there a good third party system restore program?

If it matters, i use windows defrag, CCleaner and my pc came with norton but I delted it upon receiving the computer.


Thanks in advance
 

My Computer

System One

It is a good idea to make backup images of your drive - they can be restored in a few minutes- in fact it the probably the most important thing you can do.

There is an excellent small, fast program - the free version is probably all you need.

If you only have one operating system ( sounds like you do) - you use the bootable disc the program runs off to restore the image.

Make another image every now and again so it is reasonably up to date and delete the old one.

You need to store the image somewhere that is not your operating system partition .

Make another partition for that , or use an external drive.

Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download


System restore is a useful tool - it should be working.

What exactly is the problem - at what point does it fail - any error messages?
 

My Computers

System One System Two

  • Operating System
    Vista
    CPU
    Intel E8400
    Motherboard
    ASRock1333-GLAN R2.0
    Memory
    4gb DDR2 800
    Graphics Card(s)
    nvidia 9500GT 1gb
  • Operating System
    win7/vista
    CPU
    intel i5-8400
    Motherboard
    gigabyte b365m ds3h
    Memory
    ballistix 2x8gb 3200
The error says: "System Restore did not complete successfully. Your computer's system files and settings were not changed."

I have never gotten it to work in 5 attempts.

I also read that anti-virus programs interfere with it so I should turn them off when creating a restore point and also when restoring.

This is my problem: I want to set restore points so I can experiment with new software programs. I don't want to go trough all the hassle of turning my anti-virus off and on, or restarting in safe mode.

It appears easier to get a third party program.

My pc is 2 weeks old and still has the factory image on the hd. I made my recovery disks and will be making backups of the entire hard drive. I made some registry backups using CCleaner.

I will look into the program you posted.
 

My Computer

System One

I know where you are coming from . You can probably tell I experiment with apps. and o/s's a lot. I need an easy way to recover.

The Macrium program is superb.

Did you try turning system restore off all together - then turn it back on - create a restore pt. and see if that works?
 

My Computers

System One System Two

  • Operating System
    Vista
    CPU
    Intel E8400
    Motherboard
    ASRock1333-GLAN R2.0
    Memory
    4gb DDR2 800
    Graphics Card(s)
    nvidia 9500GT 1gb
  • Operating System
    win7/vista
    CPU
    intel i5-8400
    Motherboard
    gigabyte b365m ds3h
    Memory
    ballistix 2x8gb 3200
I am experimenting and will try that.

Based on several hours of reading about that error message, it appears that the anti-virus is interfering, defragging is interfering or something similar.

I found a entire site about system restore from a MVP and it seems to back up what i am saying. System Restore in Windows Vista:

It says the vista restore works entierly different than the xp restore.

I'll keep trying to solve this problem, I just want an one-click way to rollback any new changes rather than to load an entire set of dvd backups.

Another dumb question...if I create a registry backup in CCleaner, it says to restore it just right click it and sleect merge. Would that work as a simple restore program?
 

My Computer

System One

Ccleaner creates a .reg file, I believe.

Merging that back will put those entries back in - but it won't remove any additional entries.

Might help - depends on the problem.

The only way to restore the registry properly is to back up the Hives - then restore from the command prompt in WinRe.

I should make another partition your HD and store a Macrium image on there. If you get into real trouble - boot the Macrium cd and restore the image.

On my system, I have small o/s partitions - 25 to 30gb - making the Macrium image takes 5-6 mins . Restoring takes 10 mins - no big deal.

Worth trying system restore first, before restoring an image as it is a bit quicker - if we can get it to work.
 

My Computers

System One System Two

  • Operating System
    Vista
    CPU
    Intel E8400
    Motherboard
    ASRock1333-GLAN R2.0
    Memory
    4gb DDR2 800
    Graphics Card(s)
    nvidia 9500GT 1gb
  • Operating System
    win7/vista
    CPU
    intel i5-8400
    Motherboard
    gigabyte b365m ds3h
    Memory
    ballistix 2x8gb 3200
Unfortunately - you need an installation dvd to do a repair install.

Restoring the factory image should do it.

You would need to back everything up first.

If you are still having problems after restoring to factory condition - because the machine is new - you could take it back.
 

My Computers

System One System Two

  • Operating System
    Vista
    CPU
    Intel E8400
    Motherboard
    ASRock1333-GLAN R2.0
    Memory
    4gb DDR2 800
    Graphics Card(s)
    nvidia 9500GT 1gb
  • Operating System
    win7/vista
    CPU
    intel i5-8400
    Motherboard
    gigabyte b365m ds3h
    Memory
    ballistix 2x8gb 3200
system restore needs a MINIMUM of 300mb to complete successfully. do a disk cleanup (careful not to delete restore points), uninstall any unused programs, then defrag. make sure you have the neccessary amount of free space, then try system restore again.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Aleinware Area-51
    CPU
    core 2 extreme x9000 2.8 Ghz
    Memory
    4 Gig
    Graphics Card(s)
    (2) Nvidia 8800m GTX in Sli
    Sound Card
    Onboard RealTek
    Monitor(s) Displays
    42" JVC LCD HDTV
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080p 32 bit
    Hard Drives
    (2) seagate 7200rpm in RAID 0
    (1) maxtor external 1 terabyte firewire
    Case
    laptop
    Keyboard
    a really spiffy backlit one that i can change color ;>)
    Mouse
    logitech Anywhere Mouse and built-in touchpad
    Internet Speed
    Cable
You say you deleted Norton but did you use the removal tool?? There's no way to completely get Norton off your system without using the removal tool. On my Vista 64 PC I was getting reboot times over 2 minutes because the system was trying to load Norton drivers that no longer existed.

If you haven't done the norton removal tool, do it first thing.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    HP Pavilion m9515y
    CPU
    Phenom X4 9850
    Memory
    8 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Some Radeon Cheapie with 512 MB Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    CRT
    Screen Resolution
    1280x1024
    Hard Drives
    750 GB SATA 3G
    2 SIIG Superspeed docks w/WD Caviar Black Sata II or III
Thanks milesahead...

I uninstalled it i think and i will look into the removal tool.

Yes, I found in my services folder that norton was set to run automatically!

I will do a registry search for norton and see what is left.
 

My Computer

System One

I little while ago I compiled a few options. Maybe you find something that suits you. The cheapest is to buy a Maxtor One Touch disk - since you need an external disk anyhow and the Maxtor comes with the imaging and backup programs (Maxtor Manager). I myself use Norton Ghost which I bought before I was aware of the Maxtor option. Ghost works well but it needs a little getting used to. Some of the functions you have to scout for in the interface. Lots of people like Acronis - but I never used it yet.
Ghosting approaches - summary because of popular demand « How-To Geek Forums
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Dell
    CPU
    Q6600
    Memory
    4GB
    Monitor(s) Displays
    HP w2207h
    Hard Drives
    2x250GB HDDs
    1x60GB OCZ SSD
    6 external disks 60 to 640GBs
    Other Info
    Also 1xHP desktop, 1xHP laptop, 1xGateway laptop
John32118 said:
well, system restore works from safe mode. I also found that several services for backup/system restore were turned off.
Click to expand...

If you are running Vista 32 bit prior to SP1 I found I had to do a lot of services tweaking to avoid it hogging the hd. Stuff like shadow copy service though, you should at least have on Manual so that backup and imaging programs can start the service. Also a neat thing on Home Premium is you can use Shadow Copy Explorer(it's in the list of Vista freeware) to get shadow copies of files from the system restore set. It works almost like an undelete program. A cool thing to have if you accidentally delete a file or want to get back an old version.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    HP Pavilion m9515y
    CPU
    Phenom X4 9850
    Memory
    8 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Some Radeon Cheapie with 512 MB Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    CRT
    Screen Resolution
    1280x1024
    Hard Drives
    750 GB SATA 3G
    2 SIIG Superspeed docks w/WD Caviar Black Sata II or III
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top