How to Handle Disaster Recovery with Windows Xp’s System Restore

Disaster struck, now what’s your recovery plan?

Your system is a disaster, your files are corrupt, what are you going to do to begin your recovery? That feeling.. the feeling of anger, and madness.. the feeling whenever you want to just pick up your computer’s mouse and use it to create a large hole in your monitor. What could cause someone to feel this way? In this day and age where we rely heavily on computers, it seems that whenever we need our systems to work the most, they are hit by disaster. The feeling comes naturally after you improperly shut down your system, or uninstall some software incorrectly.

Let’s face it, everyone has problems with Microsoft Windows XP. No matter how careful any user is, there will always be the threat of disaster to the user’s system. Thankfully Microsoft acknowledges this, and provides users with already installed tools for dealing with disaster recovery.

Making A Recovery Windows Xp

Lets say your system was running perfectly fine last week, and this week it has numerous errors upon startup. It’s a disaster for you because you are not able to get your work done. However with the right tool, you can easily fix this issue.

With some simple know how, and the right tool disaster recovery is simple, and even fun for the select few.

Microsoft Windows XP comes with a nice little utility known as “System Restore” that allows you to literally turn the clock back on your computer for recovery purposes. When you utilize this wonderful recovery utility, you can easily fix your system to the way it was working previously.

How the program works is pretty simple. Every day or so, Windows automatically takes a ’snapshot’ of your computer’s files and settings. It then saves the file so that you can restore your system to that specific date at a later time by using the recovery snapshot.

System Restore may seem like God’s gift to the disaster recovery user, however it still has its consequences.

There are some consequences to using this program, however they are not that bad considering the program ultimately saves you from disaster. The main consequence is that any piece of software you installed since the snapshot was taken will have to be reinstalled in order to operate correctly. Next, and settings (such as your wallpaper, Favorites, etc) that you have changed since the snapshot was taken will be lost. Any personal files such as music, pictures, and office documents will still be on the system, and thankfully not lost.

System Restore is the ultimate Windows XP disaster recovery utility. As mentioned before, you will have to select a snapshot (period of time) in which you wish to restore your system to. If for some reason you restore your system, and you are still having difficulties, you can easily undo the operation by running the disaster recovery utility again.

Also please note that if your system has a virus or spyware, using System Restore will reverse the damage however the virus / spyware will still be residing on your system. In order to prevent the system from being compromised again, you will need to get sufficient software to deal with the virus / spyware.

How to get there

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