System Restore

[S Templar]

Hi system restore may remove recently downloaded programs from the restore date you choose.
What problem are you having with your system to need to use system restore?
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...w_03may19.mspx

[jholland1964]

Are you sure you mean a System Restore or a reformat/reinstall? These are two entirely different things. System Restore would be similar to Undo in a word program...but it isn't going to take the system back to an original state. System Restore is for use when you have maybe installed a program or made a change that makes your system unstable. You can SOMETIMES restore the system back...a fairly short way...to the way it was before you installed the program or made a change, but it isn't going to take you back to how it was out of the box. The operating system makes a "snapshot" of the system and this is called a restore point. It is generally done whenever a new driver is installed or new updates are done and also probably once or twice a day. But it only holds these points for so long, depending on how much hard drive space is alloted for System Restore. It isn't terribly much, believe the default is probably around 10-12% max. I have mine set to 5%, which on my computer is approximately 2 weeks at the most.
I think you mean reformat/reinstall.
You will need your operating system disk, your driver disk, and disks for any programs you have installed, plus the install disks for any hardware you have added...printers, scanners and the like. If you have downloaded any programs you should either download the install program again and save to a cd or wait and download the newest version once your reformat/reload is complete. You will have to update all drivers for the computer and printers, scanners, etc. once all is complete. Sounds like a lot of work, but if you have all your disks ready to go it should only take you a few hours really and the computer should be running like a top.