How to Do a System Restore in Vista

[borgward]

Vista Home Basic 32 bit. Boots ok and runs but HDD is churning.

 

[Brink]

Hello borgward, and welcome to Vista Forums. :-)

The tutorial below can help show you how to do a System Restore to go back to a previously created restore point you select.

System Restore - How to

How to Do a System Restore in Vista This will show you how to do a System Restore to help you restore your computer's system files, programs, and registry settings to an earlier point in time. It will not affect your personal files, such as e‑mail, documents, or photos, so it cannot help you...

www.vistax64.com

 

[borgward]

From the link I get:
Oops! We ran into some problems.

You do not have permission to view this page or perform this action.

 

[Brink]

Hmm, let me check on that. I'll post back when the link has been fixed.

 

[Brink]

Ok. Link fixed now. Sorry about that. :-)

 

[borgward]

Thanks. I am wading through that now. I was concerned because the HDD is churning. The system seems to operate well though. I booted a live Linux session from the optical drive and ran SMART Data and self tests. I did the long test. Reports back that the HDD is OK.

This computer is a Dell Vostro 1000 Laptop. Vista Home Basic 32bit. Processor is AMD Sempron 64bit. Chipset is mostly 32bit w/some 64bit. Bought it for $5. Screen was dead but had video to external monitor. Video ribbon cable was loose. Screen came on after I re plugged the ribbon cable in.

Looks like the security and updates are not up to date. Could that be what is making the HDD churn?

Been years since I have run any MS except for one box that runs 98SE for AutoCad.

Any advice would be appreciated.

I need this machine so I can run Forscan - an automobile diagnostic for Fords.

 

[Brink]

It could be if you have any updates downloading and installing in the background.

 

[borgward]

Not doing any updates or installing. Could there be any automatic updates? How to check?

 

[lmacri]

Hi borgward:

Please see the FAQ How to Fix Vista SP2 "Checking for Updates..." Hangs and Slow Windows Updates about a known issue for Vista SP2 where Windows Update can hang on "Checking for updates..." for several hours (or even days) without throwing an error message. This problem was first reported in August 2015 and that FAQ has a link to instructions on page 1 of m#l's thread Updates not working, it has been searching for updates for hours in the MS Answers forum that should fix this problem.

If you run a manual Windows Update (Control Panel | System and Maintenance | Windows Update | Check for Updates) and Windows Update gets stuck on "Checking for updates..." for more than 15 or 20 minutes then you are likely affected by this problem. Just note, however, that these slow Windows Updates are associated with high CPU consumption and overall slow system performance, but don't normally cause the type of disk thrashing you're seeing.

If you launch your Internet Explorer 9 browser and go to Help | About Internet Explorer, you should see that IE9 has Update Versions 9.0.60 / KB4014661 (Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 9: April 11, 2017) once your system is patched to the end of extended support for Vista SP2 (11-Apr-2017) .


------------
32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox ESR v52.9.0 * Malwarebytes Premium v3.5.1-1.0.365
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3 GB RAM, 250 GB SATA HDD, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS