Restore points in Win XP

[Waiter]

Having some trouble with my other computer and was thinking of doing a system restore, but the restore point that I wanted to go to seems to have vanished in the past couple of weeks.

What about when I set a restoration point myself - do those vainsh with time just as the automatic ones?? Or are they saved on a permanent basis?

Does anyone know?

[NutWrench]

It depends on the size of the cache you set for Restore Points. The bigger the cache, the more Restore points your computer will remember.

[Wamplet]

they will get overwritten with newer ones.

I don't like them myself, because viruses can try to create them to stay alive. :o

[ZuljinRaynor]

I think the automatic ones get deleted first while the ones you set stay around longer. It does depend on your system restore size too. But then again if you find a problem that you didn't have 2 days ago then going back 2 days should fix it. It always has worked for me. :o

[Waiter]

Well, it's gone now, so I'll probably need to reinstall XP completely. I just thought it could be good to create a restore point after having installed XP and all the updates and necessary programs so that I won't have to do that the next time.

But if they too get overwritten with time there's not much point.

[ZuljinRaynor]

I think the ones you make may not get overridden by time but by making more of your own. Not sure.

After you reinstall just make one in any case. You never know.

[Ricardo_V]

I think that each restore point is never overwriten, I have checked out the folder where they should be saved and I have more than one :insomnia:

[Waiter]

Yes, there are always several, but are those ones the you made yourself?

XP automatically makes a new restore point when you make changes like installing new stuff. It then overwrites the oldest one. My problem is that I need to go right back to half a year ago when I had just made a fresh install, and up until a week ago the restore point was still there. Now the damn thing is gone and the earliest one available was made after I installed a game that messed up just about everything in my computer. (A free version of X3:Reunion that came with a german gaming magazine) At the moment it even takes about half a minute for the computer to find "itself" when I press "my computer". I get about 30 secs of waving flashlight before it displays the drives and folders.