I've broken Vista's "System Restore". How do I repair?

[Toobad]

Up until this month I have been fashioning flint arrowheads under Win98SE. I think it is safe to admit I am currently in over my head with this Home Premium 64-bit when it comes to sorting out glitches.

Initially everything went smoothly and I got all my required drivers to play ball with this OS. The System Restore facility worked like a dream but a few days ago I noticed the automatic daily restore point were no longer being created. When a couple of Windows Updates required a restart I got an "update failure" notification followed by a flaky system. Running rstrui.exe from safe mode looked positive at first but finished by reporting that the Restore had failed (I got back up by running Last Known Good Configuation). I also noticed I can no longer create new Restore Points. As Vista likes to make a restore point for every piece of software requiring a system restart, this problem needs to be resolved.

I was wondering if this is a common fault and there is a way to repair the System Restore applet other than performing a clean Vista re-install and rebuilding everything from scratch? Can I load Vista over the existing copy and still keep my settings intact or perhaps even ask it to look at itself and mend any broken bits? If I shut down System Restore it tells me it will dump all historic restore points. Assuming I get a stable restart, what's the chances it will have sorted itself out when I enable it again? It is configured to only look at my Programs drive.

If anyone here has found themselves in the same boat, I'd appreciate some advice.

[fat jez]

Boot into windows, insert the vista install DVD and start an installation. You'll get the option to perform an upgrade on your existing installation, which will do a repair installation while leaving everything else as is.

Cheers,
Stephen

[Phillikon]

Hi

I really wouldn't worry too much about windows system restore points as this only effects your low level software I.E drivers and DLL's, seeing as your system restore doesn’t work anyway, you wouldn’t be losing anything by turning it off.

What I would recommend first would be.
switch off restore, letting it clear down drive space, also it will stop windows putting back any corrupt files that the restore vault may be holding.
run a thorough check disk, allowing repair mode on files and empty space, followed by a defrag of the drive
restart the system restore services.

with all due respect to the last poster, I have found in the past that "in situ" upgrades tend to carry over any corruption that may be occurring as the upgrade sees some bad files as upgraded, therefore not overwriting them.

if the above fails to fix your problem try Microsoft’s help pages.
lastly failing everything else I would do a full rebuild of the OS.

Hope this helps.

[Phillikon]

Hi

I really wouldn't worry too much about windows system restore points as this only effects your low level software I.E drivers and DLL's, seeing as your system restore doesn’t work anyway, you wouldn’t be losing anything by turning it off.

What I would recommend first would be.
switch off restore, letting it clear down drive space, also it will stop windows putting back any corrupt files that the restore vault may be holding.
run a thorough check disk, allowing repair mode on files and empty space, followed by a defrag of the drive
restart the system restore services.

with all due respect to the last poster, I have found in the past that "in situ" upgrades tend to carry over any corruption that may be occurring as the upgrade sees some bad files as upgraded, therefore not overwriting them.

if the above fails to fix your problem try Microsoft’s help pages.
lastly failing everything else I would do a full rebuild of the OS.

Hope this helps.

[Phillikon]

Sorry double post