DescentBB

Can really be handy sometimes. Take this laptop for instance, both the SYSTEM and SOFTWARE registry hives were corrupted and the system would not boot (tried safe mode, last known good config, etc). Thanks to a 2 month old system restore point I was able to get it back up and running in only a few minutes saving the owner (and myself for that matter) the pain of a complete OS reinstall.

Granted, the only times system restore has ever been useful to me has always been this case. Registry hive(s) corrupted, have to boot into recovery console off XP cd and do the good ole "copy _registry_machine_system c:\windows\system32\config\system" by hand out of system restore. The actual system restore program inside windows IS useless because every time I need system restore the computer is unbootible! This is the only reason I keep system restore running on most computers.

-Krom

I think I'd rather (if it's feasible, I still haven't got around to actually trying) Ghost the box after a full install (OS, office, winzip, devtools, SP's mp3player, photoshop, start-menu shortcuts, send-to menu) and full tweak. Hell, if I did that, I'd probably restore the ghost every 3 months I wouldn't need a system running just for dev testing.