Spyware Doctor, an anti-spyware program decided that the Alexa Toolbar was spyware and removed it from my system. It didn’t do it the friendly way by running the uninstaller provided by Alexa; instead it entered the system Registry directly and went on the rampage, deleting all manner of data that it considered to be connected with the Alexa Toolbar.

Once I realised what had happened, I went back to Alexa and reinstalled their toolbar, but now it no longer worked. After several reinstallations and system restarts, it still wouldn’t work properly. Spyware Doctor had broken my PC.

So What Do You Do When Your PC’s System Files Get Messed Up?

Thankfully, Microsoft have incorporated System Restore into their most recent operating systems (XP and Vista), and I was able to reinstate my system and Registry files to how they were before I installed Spyware Doctor (which has now been banished from my PC).
I then reinstalled the Alexa Toolbar and it works just fine now.

How to use System Restore

Here’s what Microsoft say about System Restore: “System Restore works a lot like the Undo command in Microsoft Word. You can use System Restore to remove any system changes that were made since the last time you remember your computer working correctly. System Restore does not affect your personal data files (such as Microsoft Word documents, browsing history, drawings, favorites, or e-mail) so you won’t lose changes made to these files.“.

If you have System Restore enabled, every day that you use your computer, Windows saves the current state of the system files. This means that you can roll-back to any previous “restore point”. So if you install or run a program that affects the system files and makes the system unstable, you can undo those changes.

Here’s how:

1. Click Start, and then click Help and Support.
2. Under Pick a Task, click Undo changes to your computer with System Restore.
3. Follow the instructions on the wizard:

Select “Restore my computer to an earlier time” and click Next.

A calendar is displayed. Dates are displayed in bold if there is a restore point on that day. Click on a bold date in the calendar, and you will see a list of changes that the restore point incorporates. This includes software installed, Windows updates, and system checkpoints.

When you have found the day when you installed or ran the program that broke your system, choose that day or the one before it. I was fortunate enough to be able to find the day when I installed Spyware Doctor, and then selected the day before that.

Click on Next and you will see a confirmation page for the selected Restore Point.
Read this page. It is important to know what will happen next.

Click Next. Your system will shut down and apply the selected Restore Point to your system files settings.
Don’t worry about any other files that you have on your system, such as emails, Word documents etc. They will be unaffected. System Restore is not a time machine – it can’t save and restore everything that is on your computer to a previous time – only the system files.

When your computer restarts, you will see a message stating whether the restore was successful or not.

If you find that other software that you installed after the time of the Restore Point is no longer properly installed. You will need to re-install it. In some cases, you might even need to go into the Remove Programs control panel and remove the software and then reinstall it.

If it still fails

If your restore made no difference, or made things worse, you can even undo the change and bring the system back to today’s settings using the same System Restore mechanism.

A Final Word

It’s possible to switch off System Restore so that it doesn’t make daily backups of the changes to system files. I thoroughly recommend that you leave it switched on. You never know when it might get you out of a tight spot!

Phil Rogers is a professional software engineer who runs Phil’s Techno Talk.

Microsoft's estimated release dates are notoriously optimistic, so it's certainly unlikely to be within the next year.

Bill Gates did not reveal any details of changes or novel features to the operating system, although he did say that he was «super-enthused about what it will do in lots of ways».

The Developer Programme for Windows 7 has already been started by Microsoft and there are rumours that an early test version of the new OS, named Milestone-1, has already been given to Microsoft's biggest customers.

Categories: Operating Systems.

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