Use the System Restore in Windows

Before you install that next piece of software on your system, it’s always a good idea to set a restore point. Granted things may go well and the install may be just fine, it’s always good to get into the habit of setting restore points for that one chance when things don’t go so well.

This doesn’t apply to just installing software, restore points should also be set before installing a new piece of hardware or hardware drivers. This way in case anything bad happens or the drivers break something, you can roll back and work from there without having to worry about reinstalling Windows.

You can do this by clicking Start, going to All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and then System Restore. This will bring up a window letting you set a system restore point any time that you wish.

Another great thing with system restore is that you can set it to do automatic restores which will set restore points of your computer at times when you aren’t using it. These restore points are priceless for those moments when one day your computer is acting strangely, maybe you changed a setting for something and can’t remember what it was exactly. But you can remember when your computer was working well, so you can open the system restore and roll Windows back to when it was working.

System restore is also good for viruses and malware. Let’s say that you inadvertently got a virus on your PC and it’s messing with your Windows installation. You can do a system restore and while it won’t remove the virus, it will set Windows to a time before the virus was executed. Beware though that if you’ve had the virus for a while it may be in the saved system restore points, so you will have to restore back to a point before you were having problems. After the restore, the virus will still be on your system, but you can do a virus scan and catch those pesky intruders. Please remember that this method does not remove viruses or malware, it just helps you contain them should problems arise. Never replace system restore for a good virus scanning program.