System Recovery for Windows

If after all the troubleshooting, repairing and even the restoring from a created restore point, you find that the only solution your left with is a recovery either from a partition or from a disk there are some things you need to do before and after to ensure a smooth and peaceful windows recovery.

We've all had it done to us at one time or another if we've owned our computer for more than a year or two; the computer catches a virus, or the power goes out, or the cat, well never mind, you get the idea. If you find that you've reached the end of your rope and just cannot fix or repair the windows operating system and you've tried to restore your computer to another, earlier time, a recovery is probably your next and almost final option.

There's a couple of things you should know and there are some things you should definitely do before you take this kind of step, either the recovery over a current installation or a format and recovery. I'll first go over some helpful troubleshooting ideas that might help out before that final step of recovery is used, and a clarification of some terms just so we're on the same page.

A system restore is just turning back the time on your computer to a time that was in the past or earlier than the current time. A restore point is a certain time that the computer has a file stored with all the information recorded about settings and important things about the computer. These are stored for just the time when you have changed things on your computer and can't figure out how to undo things that didn't work quite as you planned. This is a system that Microsoft has installed as part of Windows to help people undo things on their computers. It will not erase or delete any files but instead just sets all computer and registry settings back to an earlier time, your data and files, pictures and addresses are not touched. This is performed from the help and support sections restore.