Fight Computer Freezes
It was not until about 3 years ago that I started to really appreciate the power that the System Restore function within windows could provide. Over the course of these past 3 years, system restore has saved my butt several times when it comes to fixing computer crashes, computer freezes or the dreaded blue screen of death.
System restore can be access normally by one of two ways:
- For Windows XP: Go to Start > Help and Support. From there, you should have an option to ‘Undo Changes to your computer with System Restore ‘.
- For Window Vista: Right-click on the My Computer icon and select properties. This will bring up the ‘Basic computer information page’. From here you will click on the link that says ‘Advanced System Settings which will open the system properties window. Select the System Protection tab and the click on the System Restore button to launch it.
What exactly the System Restore do to your computer?
System restore runs in the background using very little of your computer’s resources. It is constantly monitoring the ‘state’ of your computer. By state, I mean thing like the registry, system files, programs that have been installed and windows updates that have been installed. Typically, every 24 hours, the system restore creates whats called a checkpoint. This checkpoint contains all of the information gathered from the previous day and allows these changes to be undone if so desired.
One of the most asked questions regarding system restore is: Will I lose the Microsoft Office documents I have created or the pictures I have downloaded to my computer if I run a store? The answer is No!
Here are some typical scenarios that would warrant running a system restore.
Scenario I
Let’s say you checked for the latest windows updates and found that you had 10 or 20 missing updates so you decide to download and install them. After a reboot, you find that your machine is not working correctly and maybe you even got a blue screen of death error. In this case, I would boot into safe mode and perform a system restore to the previous day.
Scenario II
While surfing the web, you got infected with a really bad trojan virus that made your computer freeze and you had to manually shut it down. The first line of defense for me in this situation is to again, startup in save mode and preform a system restore. In most cases, this will not totally rid you of the virus, but will make your machine at the least bootable. Once you gain access back to your desktop you can run a virus scan to remove the remnants of trojan.
As a recap, don’t be afraid to utilize the System Restore function. It is a great tool and one that every computer user should know how to use. Why pay a geek a hundred bucks to do the same thing when you can easily run it yourself.
photo credit: accent on eclectic