System Restore

[PaulVarjak]

I bought a Sony desktop (running XP home) for my sons last January. I have not had any issues and have been pleased with the performance. It did not come with a recovery disk but comes with instructions on how to create one - which I did.

Over the weekend this computer was somehow restored to its' original factory settings. Just like when I first opened it up and set it up. All of the programs I installed are gone as are all of the mp3's, jpeg's etc. Somehow the Google toolbar was still there when I opened IE. Not sure how it survived when all other files are now gone.

I had the recovery disks and my sons are too young to know how to use them. I am dumbfounded as to how something like this could occur. Has anyone heard of anything like this before? I did some searches but came up empty.

Luckily there was nothing critical stored on the hard drive.

[Scarecrow Man]

System restore only restores Windows files. You can undo a System Restore, by loading System Restore and choosing Undo Last Restore. If there are no points saved to undo to, chances are someone has used your factory restore disk. If your goggle tool bar was still installed, I would guess a system restore has been preformed.

[benb]

Do you think your children may have been messing around and formatted the hard drive or something obscure like that?

[PaulVarjak]

Anything is possible but I really doubt they would know how to know how to format a hard drive; they're only 11 yrs old. Plus the system did not come with an XP disk.

As I mentioned I created the recovery disks but they would not know how to use them.

Is it possible that somehow someone hacked into the system and when they discovered there wasn't anything useful did a system restore just for kicks?

XP allows for remote access right? I would assume that the first system restore date would be when I first set this system up. Doesn't sound plausible but who knows?

I guess this will be an unsolved mystery.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

What is the situation with system updates - are they also all gone?

How does your Add/Remove Programs panel look - everything gone as well? (Except for the Goggle toolbar?)

[PaulVarjak]

All the old system updates are gone.

I had to re-do all of them and they are all now dated Oct. 1.

Everything is gone from the add/remove programs list as well.

[Scarecrow Man]

System Restore, as I stated above, will only restore windows files and the state of your computer as of the date of the restore point.

It would seem, since all updates are gone, and all programs removed, windows has been reinstalled.

You may want to check your C:\ drive to see if there are two windows installations. If someone had installed Windows again, you can delete the new installation and go back to the old one, otherwise your data is gone and is likely not recoverable without use of a third party.

You can check for multiple installations by going to C:\ and looking for WINDOWS and WINDOWS2 folders, or something similar. Another way to check is to click Start > Run > msconfig

Click the boot.ini tab and click, Check All Boot Paths. If there is more than one, there is more than one version of windows installed. If not, your original has been replaced.