Avon River Computer Service
System Restore in a Windows Based System
There comes a time when you think to yourself, "I shouldn't have done that". You may have unwittingly installed a computer virus that was pretending to be something else, or it may have been a hardware device that is incompatible with your computer system, and is now causing problems. Whatever the reason, wouldn't it be great if we could go back in time when everything was working properly. Great news, we can!
There is a tool which has been included with every Windows operating system from late Windows 98 and Windows ME, to present day that will allow you to do just that. As long as it has been enabled and has been creating restore points, repair of your computer may be just a few minutes away.
This tutorial will show you how to use System Restore to get your system back up and running.
Vista users should be able to follow the Windows 7 tutorial
Note: In some situations where you can't get the operating system to load up in normal mode, you may have to start the computer in safe mode to perform the steps below. If you don't know how to get the computer to start up in safe mode, it's probably safer to take the computer to Avon River Computer Service and let us fix it for you
Windows 7 System Restore
1) To activate System restore, you need to go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools, then select System Restore Select Next button to go to step 2. Alternatively, you can type rstrui.exe in the "Search Programs and Files" textbox after clicking the start orb. This will bring you to the same place, see below.
2) Select a restore point from the restore points shown or tick the Show more restore points to show restore points from further back in time if they were available. Select Next to go to step 3
3) Confirm the restore point. If this is not the restore point that you were expecting, select back to go back and select another restore point. Select Scan for affected programs if you want to see which programs are going to be affected by the restore process, remember any programs or hardware that was installed after the restore point will be invisible after system restore completes. If you want to use the software or hardware device again, it will need to be re-installed. Select Finish when you are satisfied that everything is ok
4) After selecting Finish, the computer will shut down and re-start. It will boot up to a blue colored screen
with a progress bar indicating the stage of system restore. When the progress bar reaches 100%,
the computer will again re-start, and load up Windows as normal. You will then get a message from System restore
telling you that your computer has been restored to your selected date.
If there was a problem with the system restore process, you will get a message saying
that the computer couldn't be restored back to the selected date.
The latter message could indicate deeper problems and professional help should be sought
