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Personal Tech

Check system restore settings

Q. When I try to restore the system, the program goes through the routine and after restart, the window opens and I get the restore window informing me that it cannot restore and no changes have been made. I have Windows XP Home Edition with SP2 with all updates.

By John Torro, Times Correspondent
Published November 26, 2007

Q. When I try to restore the system, the program goes through the routine and after restart, the window opens and I get the restore window informing me that it cannot restore and no changes have been made. I have Windows XP Home Edition with SP2 with all updates.

A. Here are a few things to check: Make sure the System Restore Service is running. Click Start, Control Panel, then Performance and Maintenance. Click Administrative Tools, Computer Management, then Services and Applications. Click Services, and then click System Restore Services. Ensure the service is set to Automatic and the status is "started." Now let's check your free disk space. System restore will delete existing Restore Points and then suspend itself whenever the free disk space available drops below 50 megabytes. To give System Restore a fresh start, right click "My Computer," select Properties and then click on the System Restore tab. Put a check in the box for Disable Restore on all drives. Click apply and then Reboot. After the system reboots, go back to the System Restore tab and turn it back on. Click apply. Now create a new Restore Point System Tools, Restore, Create a Restore Point. Try to restore the Restore Point you created. For more information on System Restore FAQ/troubleshooting, check out this URL: www.microsoft.com/technet/community/en-us/management/sysrestore_faq.mspx.

Q. Every time I close Outlook Express, this message appears: "To free up disk space, Outlook Express can compact messages. This may take up to a few minutes." The C drive has 92 percent free space. The D contains the Recovery programs and has 5 percent free space. I just ignore it and nothing happens, but could something happen?

A. While you're fine to skip this question since you have plenty of free disk space, there may be another reason why you may want to compact your Outlook Express folders and even some of your regular file folders (NTFS file system only). Many may think that compacting folders, which is similar to "zipping" them, may slow down their system when it comes time to access the files within, which are compacted. While this is true when you need to write files to a compacted folder, it is not always true when reading from them. Since a compacted file takes up less space on disk, the disk read heads, which are stationary, require less time waiting for the disk to revolve enough times in order for them to pick up the data. Once the compacted data is brought into memory, it is uncompacted faster then it would have been waiting for the extra disk revolutions required to get the same data. So compacting your Outlook Express folders and even some normal file folders that contain files that are mostly read from rather than written or updated can be more efficient for your system while also saving disk space.

Send questions to personaltech@sptimes.com or Personal Tech, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731. Questions are answered only in this column.

[Last modified November 23, 2007, 19:54:10]