System Restore question 2

[cmeagan656]

I'm sorry if this is a silly question but I hardly ever need to use system restore.

I used system restore the other day and when I did it restored one of my data folders to the previous restore point's state. Is this normal? My understanding was that a system restore didn't touch any data files.

I have an Acer Travelmate 5100 notebook with 2 drives:
Acer C: and Acerdata D:. On D: I have a folder named "installs" where I store copies of the CDs/downloads of all installed applications.

When (on Aug. 5) I did a system restore to a restore point on Aug. 3 the restore removed three downloads I had added to the D:\installs folder after the Aug. 3 restore point was taken. The 3 downloads were: the sysinternals zip file from bcastner's link, office07beta, and visio07 beta. The office and visio folders contained only the downloaded exe file as I had not yet installed the beta.

Did system restore zap the files because they contained executables even though they weren't installed?

Fortuanately I didn't have to download the files again. I simply undid the previous restore, moved the above folders to my flash drive, restored back to Aug. 3 a 2nd time, and then moved the affected folders back into the installs folder.

BTW, I do backup my installs folder to DVD on a regular basis. I just hadn't backed it up before doing the original system restore because I wasn't expecting folders in it to be lost by a system restore.

Thanks.

 

[linney]

System Restore will "grab" System files, .dll's and .exe files, not sure about .zip files, but the one you mention is full of .exe files. For a detailed explanation you can't get better than this "bible".

Microsoft Windows XP System Restore
Bobbie Harder
Microsoft Corporation

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...y/en-us/dnwxp/html/windowsxpsystemrestore.asp

April 2001

Summary: This article discusses the System Restore feature of Microsoft Windows XP, which enables users, in the event of a problem, to restore their PCs to a previous state without losing personal data files. (12 printed pages)

 

[bcastner]

I do not know about Bible, but MS-MVP Bert Kinney's site is only about System Restore in XP:

http://bertk.mvps.org/

 

[bcastner]

I am not sure why System Restore would have acted as it did in this case.

The files that are monitored or excluded from monitoring are specified in the file %windir%\system32\restore\Filelist.xml, and perhaps some changes were made to the default entries in this listing.

I know that looking at the defaults, there should not be any activity relating to a ZIP file:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/sr/sr/monitored_file_extensions.asp

 

[cmeagan656]

Thanks for the info and the links Linney and Bill.

Bill: I didn't make any changes to the default entries.

Now that I'm aware that I could lose data from my installs folder I'll be sure to grab anything that was deposited there since the restore point that I'm going back to.

Thanks again.