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I'm not real fimiliar with this OS yet as I hardly ever use the comp its installed on. Its not my game machine.
Just wondering is these restore pionts really work.

Lets say my son comes over and before he sets in, I create a restore point:

Then he: (example)

Downloads a bunch of chatting progs and crap
Installs a big fat 2 cd game
Changes my resoluton
Updates drivers because theres new ones but not nessescary better ones
Somehow introduces a virus into the system

After he leaves and I want to keep nothing:

I restore back to the restore point that I created..

My question is, would my comp be back to the way is was? (games gone, programs gone, res and drivers restored and no virus, provided is wasnt a bad virus)

Anyone used it? It would be great if the above was true..

Restore points are pretty good BUT it's not as effective as making a Ghost image. There's a lot of things a system restore won't fix. Keep in mind that a Restore Point is NOT an image. It tracks changes to files and registry entries and backs up only certain information.

In general restore points are good for un-doing registry changes and driver installations (although XP also has a driver roll-back feature that let's you go back to the previous driver for each device in device manager, which is better to use if you just have one driver install you want to undo).

Restore points will also restore the registry back to the way it was before a program was installed (essentially uninstalling it) BUT I've found it usually doesn't uninstall the files - you have to manually delete the folder(s).

System restore has failed me sometimes (on client's systems) when the problem is with a corrupt DLL. For instance I've NEVER been able to fix a screwed up AOL installation by going back to a restore point (but AOL really butchers your computer so it's no big suprise).

Restore points don't help much with a virus infection either, and many viruses now infect the Restore files.

So if you REALLY want to play safe, make a Ghost image of your boot partition.

If you want to prevent your kids from mucking up your XP installation then, then use XP Pro and make setup their user account so it's not an administrator so they can't install anything or make system changes (not 100% sure if this will work in XP Home since it has a simpler security system).

Hey thanks a ton FP. Thats pretty much answers my questions.
I figured it had to be limited in its abilities because it only takes a few seconds to create a restore point.
I may have to check into gost in the near future.

Pretty much what FP says. XP restore points have saved my ass more than once. Never had a problem with them.

I just started using ghost the other day and it's an extremely simple tool so far. I haven't had to use the image yet, though I sorta wanna screw up my C:\ partition to try just to see if it works

Just start deleting stuff from the registry, that ought to do the trick.