Restore what`s the point

I once had an engineer come to me with a PC that she could not fix - the client had bought it six months earlier from a shop in Brighton.  The shop did not want to know when it started on a go-slow.  The customer gave us a call on the off-chance we could fix it.

We operate a no-fix no-fee policy so of course the PC ended up on one of our test-benches with the engineer scratching her head. 

Taking a look at the machine I asked her what this load of stuff was on the hard-drive taking up space and giving virus detected messages, but could not be deleted.  It was the fore-runner to Windows Restore - the software that is so clever it can detect a problem and recover you PC back to before the problem occurred.

I told her to remove it, try fixing the problem and reinstate it afterwards...

Of course it worked, she fixed the problem and re-enable the software and the PC went back to the happy client.

What is my point - well - it is this observation.

PC problems are caused mostly by:

1. Hardware faults

2. User error

3. Badly written software

None of these is well dealt with by a software that 'Restores your system to where it was before the problem occurred'.  The use of a restore software requires a great deal of skill on the part of the operator to know what caused the problem, which restore point to use and what to do afterwards.

My opinion - turn it off now - it will free up your PC resources making it run faster, use less disk space and ultimately should make your PC more reliable.  Of course I accept no responsibility if you do this and have a problem that might have been rectified by Restore point software.

If any of you have experiences where the restore point software saved the day perhaps you could post them here...

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