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Features
Dec. 1, 2006
MrSmarty Sez
Has a virus infected your settings? Use Microsoft's wayback machine, Windows System Restore, to return to better times. By Sandra Rosenzweig
By Sandra Rosenzweig
No. 256: Hidden deep in our Windows XP operating system is System Restore. What it does is restore all of your system files to a previous time in your computer?s history?just like the wayback machine in Rocky and His Friends. This utility, which you already own, is probably the very best sweaty-brow solution that Microsoft makes. Use it when you have just trashed your system by installing a piece of malicious junk software; run it when you have been fooling with your registry (you were warned!) and now nothing works right. Choose an earlier backup date from the restore history screen (MS does this automatically) and BAM! Your system files go back in time to just before you fouled up your system. You won?t find some of the programs you installed after the restore date (though they?re still there), but nothing, no nothing, happens to your data. System Restore lives at: Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools> System Restore. Go there now, before it?s too late!
No. 256: Hidden deep in our Windows XP operating system is System Restore. What it does is restore all of your system files to a previous time in your computer?s history?just like the wayback machine in Rocky and His Friends. This utility, which you already own, is probably the very best sweaty-brow solution that Microsoft makes. Use it when you have just trashed your system by installing a piece of malicious junk software; run it when you have been fooling with your registry (you were warned!) and now nothing works right. Choose an earlier backup date from the restore history screen (MS does this automatically) and BAM! Your system files go back in time to just before you fouled up your system. You won?t find some of the programs you installed after the restore date (though they?re still there), but nothing, no nothing, happens to your data. System Restore lives at: Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools> System Restore. Go there now, before it?s too late!
#335666
Megan Kinneyn
Daily Journal Staff Writer
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