System restore Problem - Windows XP

[Jules2408]

Am running Windows XP on my Toshiba laptop. Tried to run a system restore in normal mode a number of times selecting different restore dates. Each time the system restore fails and windows advises that the restore was not successful and "no changes have been made".

"Help and support " has NOTHING to advise what to do if a SR fails. It is not a disk capacity issue as I clean and defrag and there is no message coming up suggesting there is a lack of capacity to run SR. I have not tried running a Sys Restore in safe mode as I am not sure it does the the same thing.

Appreciate any advice on what I should do. I ran System Restore 12 months ago in normal mode and it worked fine - but not now.

Thank you

 

[Austinn1]

Try different dates. On a desktop I once worked on, it wouldnt let me use a certain date.

 

[Jules2408]

Thanks Austin. As mentioned in my note I have actually tried different dates(about 5) but all produce the same result. I could try more but I suspect it's not the date selected that is the issue. Oh well. Thank god they don't build cars like computer software.
Thanks again for the input.

 

[Austinn1]

Try it in safe mode.
Also, Why exactly are you trying to restore it to an earlier time? Whats wrong with the PC?

 

[Jules2408]

Yes looks like I will have to run it in safe mode but I'm not sure it does the same thing as you cannot undo a restore run in safe mode.

The machine was crashing constantly (black screen then powers off) so thought I should run a system restore. I have now removed a spyware detection program from my machine as I suspected this might have been an issue. There is no reason why this should have caused any problem at all. However, it seems to be running ok again now but you never know with these things.

I still cannot run a simple system restore in normal mode so there is still a problem somewhere.

Anyhow bought a new toshiba laptop yesterday to get a machine with decent capacity. (Still need the older one though). 640 GB hard drive and 4 GM ram. Should be enough guts to last a while.

Thanks again.

 

[JogaBonito1502]

Jules, try downloading Spybot:S&D/SUPERantispyware, and AVG8.0. Shttp://www.superantispyware.com/ee if it comes up with anything.

 

[Jules2408]

Thanks for the input Joga.

I did have spybot loaded and ran scans with it. I suspect it was causing a problem so I removed it. Since I did that things seem to be running ok- ie system stable - for the time being except not being able to run SYS Restore.

I also had AVG loaded and have run scans with it. But as I have Norton Security loaded I had to remove it as different anti -virus programs on the one machine will interfere with one another and can potentially cause problems. It's useful for the short term though.

Re SPYBOT....Norton should be able to pick up and remove spyware but it clearly does not do an adequate job as Spybot picked up quite a few problems when I ran it.
It does seem odd that my sytem seems to be normal again after I deleted the SPYBOT program.

I also do regular disc cleans (every day or 2) and run a defrag every month or so. Incidentally there is a very good free disc cleaning program you can download - "CCleaner". It's a good option to using the windows clean program and seems to do a thorough job very quickly.

Thanks again for your suggestions.

 

[JogaBonito1502]

Man, if I were you I'd switch over from Norton to AVG. If you're paying for Norton, and you don't mind paying for protection, get NOD32. I heard it's great.