software restore point winxp/sp2

[snoop003]

Why is win xp not letting me restore to a previous date? I've tried many to no avail. Also i've lost the basic macromedia flash & sun ms java & their sites will not let me redownload the software? any ideas? This has all happened since i installed dantz retrospect so i can do full backups on my maxtor one touch 120GB external hd. Would appreciate any ideas!!

Thanks, snoop003

[doctorgonzo]

System Restore is a stack-based system that works a lot like a differential backup. That is, if you restore to a point five days ago, it first restores to yesterday, then the day before, then the day before, going in a chain until it reaches the restore point that you want. If any of the links in the chain are broken, all restore points prior to that will be unavailable. This happens more than you might think. There's not much you can do to get access to those earlier restore points.

[Nuclear Krusader]

How can a certain restore point may be lost? Anything one can do to prevent that from happening?

[doctorgonzo]

It just happens sometimes. I believe that a restore point conists of a list of files and registry keys that have been changed. If some of those files disappear, then System Restore can't carry out all of the actions to restore your computer to that restore point, so it fails. And because it's a chain, all previous restore points will fail as well.

There's nothing you can do to prevent this or fix it as far as I know.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Scary.

[doctorgonzo]

Yeah, System Restore works well when it works, but you can't rely on it.