Restoring a complete system

[rov1200]

After doing a recovery there is still lots of work to do, XP updates, installing drivers, printer software, your own utilities, etc that can take many hours to get back to a usuable system.
Would it be correct once all this has been done to create your own restore point at this stage to make for easy installation in future rather than relying on XP to insert its own restore point sometime in the future?

[Old Salt]

Hi rov1200

I think the system will generate one for you, but it sure won't hurt and you can label it so it is easy to identify, i.e. restored 31 Jul 2008

But, I have found even then when you restore a system there is still loads of additional things that keep popping up and require setup.

Old Salt

[Postdog]

Whenever I have done complete re-installs, I have created a restore point for every bit of software I install again.

time consuming, but probably worth it.

Mind you, over time, it all goes to pot again....

[BillySugger]

Surely if you do a complete reinstall you are formatting the hard drive & therefore system restore & everything else will be gone . Doing a backup with Ghost or Acronis is more useful as you will have all the updates , drivers etc .

[rojash]

I'm not sure how a restore point will "make for easy installation in future". I'm with BillySugger; if you now have a complete, clean working system, do an image backup. Then, next time you want a clean install, you won't need to do all that hoop-jumping.

[rov1200]

Sureley the point of doing a system restore is that you are NOT doing a complete reinstall but are using a snapshot of the system when carried out. I would have thought this would save a large amount of time rather than going to the format followed by the factory reset. An image backup may be useful especially to save your own data but we are talking about the operating system.

[rojash]

From your original post, I understood that you had done a complete recovery: i.e. a reinstall of Windows. You then you need to add your software, drivers, etc.

If you now took an image backup, in the event that you ever needed to reinstall again, simply restore the image which will include your complete operating system, all the drivers, all the software, utilities, updates, etc., in one hit. The only additional work would be to redo any changes that you had made between the backup and the restore.

[ACtheTROLL]

lol

no one seems to understand sytem restore ...
depending on your settings you could only be keeping the last 5 or so (the system creates one every day .... so they don't last forever (so post ... time consuming AND a waste!)
Once you've got one .... it's going to restore the windows components that are changed ... not restore a prog if it breaks ... or return your machine to better days.

roj and billy have nailed it ... you need to create a restore IMAGE not a resrore point

Vista business and ultimate have it built in ... but for my money acronis is the one for home users.

we us Drive Image daily - once the hard work is done create an image - transfer to DVD - then if all fails ... rebuild in about 25 mins.

the only pitfall is you need two images .... one with nothing but the OS and drivers
the second with the system you want to end up with ...
this one has limited life because
programs change and update .... as do your tastes ... in 12 months you might still want XP ... but maybe you'll want office 2020 with it not the 97 version

and updating lots of progs can be more time consuming than installing them fresh.

[rov1200]

I hope someone has told Microsoft their system restores are useless. They must have spent millions getting them to work.

[BillySugger]

System restore & backup are 2 different things . Read the posts

[rojash]

rov1200, system restores are not useless, they are great if (say) an update makes a change which breaks your system, and you want to undo it. As BillySugger says, read the posts to learn the difference between a backup and a restore point.