o Turning back the hands of time

So here’s the situation: Your computer was working fine recently but it seems that now your browser has been crashing or you can’t get on to Paragon, or you have been getting errors. What do you do? As Tech’s, we like to look at a number of possibilities but when adjustments made to correct the issue or issues do not result in success, a great tool is System Restore.

System Restore can turn back the hands of time to a date you know your system was working. It will not alter data files so there is no reason to worry. How you (or we) run this process is by going to Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Restore. It can take a few minutes to come up after you have clicked on the icon. You will have 2 options. Select the one that says “Choose a different restore point”. From there you pick a date that you are certain was before the point of failure.

You can also click the check box Show more restore points for more date ranges. It is better to go back a few days or even a week or more before the point you know your computer was working right, just to be on the safe side if you are unsure. After System Restore runs, your system will reboot. If this process still does improve the situation, you may have a virus or Malware or something else going on. Sometimes System Restore fails to roll back or if the System Restore succeeds, it may not fix the particular issue you are having. This is where you may need to seek out a Tech person or us at CCAR.

In the next article you will learn how to recover a file you had deleted or improperly changed and get back the old version.

Here´s to happy computing!

Richard Tausch, MCSE, CCNA, CompTia Security +