[wllm55]

I was doing a clean up of my Parent's computer, Gateway 2.10 celeron, 256ram, Windows XP, SP2. I had done a similiar clean up a month ago. At that time I noticed that their computer had set a "Restore Point" every single day for the previous 2 months. This time I noticed that it had done it again everyday since my last service call, needless to say that is a lot of memory used up! What is causing this. They have not added any programs or removed any. There is nothing in "Scheduled Task" until now. I added CCleaner to a daily cleanup.
They use this 'puter for the internet, some documents and a couple of pictures. They use AOL dial up and that is about it.
Just for general maintenance I ran Ad-aware, CCleaner, CleanUp! and RegSeeker, and defrag. RegSeeker did clean out 800 entries. Also, since everything was working alright, I reset the memory storage for System Restore to 200mb which dumped all the Restore Points except the last 5, and then reset it to middle of the memory scale, about 1250megs or whatever it is.
Anyone have any ideas why this thing keeps setting a restore point everyday? It is about the same time each day except it is 10 mins latter each day. Please Advise, Thanks Newt

P.S. A scan with McAfee doesn't show any problems.

Edited by wllm55, 04 October 2005 - 12:19 PM.

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Hey wllm55!

It is possible that mcafee or some other program is automatically setting a restore point every day due to a setting that is in place in that program. I would check it out and see.

Fenor

[Fenor]

Hey wllm55!

It is possible that mcafee or some other program is automatically setting a restore point every day due to a setting that is in place in that program. I would check it out and see.

Fenor

[wllm55]

Yeah, that was my thought too, but so far I have not found anything like that running.

[Johanna]

Setting a Restore Point every day is by design. Restore points do not use "memory". They are cumulative "snapshots" of system files, in other words, each new day compares files with yesterday's for changes. Turning down space allocated for SR like you did is perfectly fine. For users like your parents, I do not suggest turning it off. If you want to improve the computer's performance, buy them another stick of memory. SR isn't causing any problems, and it may save you time and effort one day, since you do their maintanance.

Johanna

[wllm55]

Yeah, I hear what you are saying, but both this time and the last time I dumped the excessive restore points I picked up 3gigs of memory. Actually the last time I picked up 6gigs, that included all the cleaning up of disk, files and registry too.
I did retain 5 of the restore points, and with their computer, I would not dare to turn off System Restore. I know that I turned it off on my computer, but I have backups and would do a reinstall at a moments notice if there was a problem.
But if I understand you correctly, you are saying that a "restore point" once a day is NORMAL? And if it is, should I reduce the amount of memory used for system restore?
Thanks for the reply, Newt

[Johanna]

A daily Restore Point is normal. I just checked, and my setting is 6% which is 839MB, and I have two weeks available. I don't think I've ever used an RP more than a day or two old, but I'm not using that much in resources, relatively speaking, so I'll leave it like that. I only use SR on my OS partition, and like you, my backups are done. It would be a nusiance to have to reformat, but not a disaster. If your parents are like mine, if they have back ups of their files, bookmarks & address book, it's because you did them.

Johanna

[wllm55]

Amen Sister!

Edited by wllm55, 04 October 2005 - 01:13 PM.