Tools to do restores on a PC

[Iman74]

This topic is a tuff one for me because I am getting mix reviews on what direction I should go in. Basically my situation is this, I have a beautiful 3-year-old daughter, who is getting more and more interested in the computer. Now as a PC Tech there is no way she is getting on the one I use on a regular basis. So the plan is to setup a PC just for her to use for whatever: at this age it will be just learning games. However, my career has shown no matter what the age is, they always break it. Now I work 5 days a week, 8 hrs a day fixing other people’s screw ups; with that said I don’t need to be home on my own time doing it there. So what I am trying to decide on (which I am not lucky enough to use at work) is some type of restore option. Now I am fully aware of the one on XP and it seems okay. There are times I have seen it work phenomenal, and then there are times I have seen it work okay. Now a guy I work with highly recommended a Norton program called GoBack. My research on Newegg, Amazon, and here shows mix reviews. So I am torn in which direction I want to go. What I want to achieve is this, assume my daughter or/and wife with a “software” problem with the PC confronts me. I want to be able to say, “What day did this start happening?” From there go the day before or two days before and do a restore so it’s back to that point, and the problem is solved. What do you guys recommend???

[Statica]

I'd recommend a virtualization solution rather than installing a restore software on your PC. Running something like Virtual PC (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx) will allow you to gunk up an installation of XP without touching the host OS. It's also free for now.

[taj]

What's your budget?

You might look at DeepFreeze from Faronics Corporation or Acronis True Image (Home). DeepFreeze allows you to make any changes you want to files and settings, but after you reboot all the changes will be lost. You can also set a time period where the disk is 'thawed', meaning changes to files / settings are kept and updates for the OS and software can be applied. However, some people report problems with DeepFreeze - sometimes it doesn't 'thaw' properly and changes are lost.

Acronis True Image can be used to create a hard disk image when the system is set up how you want it, and then you can restore from that image whenever things go wrong, from a bootable disc if necessary (True Image lets you make a bootable rescue media once installed).

Also pricing can be an issue:
Acronis True Image Home (download version) $49.99
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/sales/online/

DeepFreeze seems to be more expensive and aimed more at large corporations with many workstations (time saving solution), but I may be wrong.
Have a look here:
http://www.faronics.com/index.asp

Like Statica said, you could opt for Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 (SP1, free download), but it could possibly be too slow even if she is only playing learning games. There's also a chance of her quitting out of the Virtual PC by accident, although there is a key combination to do it (which you can change), and messing up the host PC itself. I'm saying this because I doubt you're going to be giving a state-of-the-art computer to your 3 year old daughter which could handle virtualisation. On my 1.6 GHz / 512 MB computer Virtual PC 2004 seems slow and laggy, and thats without any additional programs running, just Windows XP.

Hope this is useful,

- Taj