System restore side effects?

Mmcd · 31-08-2009 12:50pm #1

Last night my laptop was a little weird, explorer wasnt working properly so I decided to restart it. When I did though this came up and I decided to do system restore. It ran through fine but afterwards I found that all jpeg, avi, and .doc files had been deleted from the primary hard disk that vista is on. Also alot of my programs were messed up. I had to reinstall firefox and itunes went through the welcoming configuration process but once I had skipped through this it was fine with all my library as it should be. There were other problems such as mp3tag not working because it was missing a language file. I decided to do another restore to another point a few days previous but it had the same problems. Also I had to run a repair install on avg to get it to work.
I have gotten my laptop back to normal (sort of) now but am wondering should I bring it to a workshop to get it checked. Does anyone know why the restore went so badly?

kippy · 31-08-2009 12:55pm

Did you do a normal restart -start shutdown restart?
When you restarted did you hit one of the "F" keys, to bring up the recovery options? That screen generally wouldnt appear unless you hit picked the option on startup.
Are you sure you picked a "System Restore" as opposed to a "Complete PC restore" (which sounds like what you actually ended up with)

Depending on the problems you encountered a System restore sounds a bit too much before doing any other troubleshooting and from what I can see it looks like you didnt do a system restore but restored the laptop back to its factory settings as you bought it.

RoadKillTs · 31-08-2009 12:56pm

A system restore should only restore system files. Word docs, pictures etc should be left alone.

It sounds like you did a complete restore to me.

Mmcd · 31-08-2009 1:01pm

I dont think I could have done a complete restore as I picked the point (which was after a windows update) and also there are plenty of files that werent touched!

RoadKillTs · 31-08-2009 1:04pm

I don't know tbh. I've used system restore hundreds of times and it never deleted any personal files that were created.

Mmcd · 31-08-2009 1:15pm

If I had done a complete restore would it leave the laptop completely blank or would the programs still be there?

RoadKillTs · 31-08-2009 1:17pm

Yes. Whatever programs you had when you got it would still be there.

Mmcd · 31-08-2009 1:22pm

But firefox and itunes wouldnt, especially with their settings and bookmarks intact

RoadKillTs · 31-08-2009 1:24pm

True. It's a strange one. Either way something is badly corrupt. You may need to backup and reinstall.

Mmcd · 31-08-2009 1:29pm

RoadKillTs wrote: »

True. It's a strange one. Either way something is badly corrupt. You may need to backup and reinstall.

vista?

RoadKillTs · 31-08-2009 1:31pm

vista?

What?

Mmcd · 31-08-2009 1:36pm

RoadKillTs wrote: »

What?

Are you suggesting that I reinstall vista?

RoadKillTs · 31-08-2009 1:38pm

Well if its still messed up and it sounds like it is it might be a good idea.
Backup your files and then select the Complete PC Restore option from the repair menu.

mickoneill30 · 31-08-2009 1:41pm

Mmcd wrote: »

Last night my laptop was a little weird, explorer wasnt working properly so I decided to restart it. When I did though this came up and I decided to do system restore. It ran through fine but afterwards I found that all jpeg, avi, and .doc files had been deleted from the primary hard disk that vista is on.

What's more likely is that whatever caused you the problem in Explorer probably caused the same problem with your jpg files. You just didn't notice it at the time.

The first thing to do would be to back up whatever files you do have left.

Then your options are to run a scandisk or try and recover your documents. If your hard drive is OK then the documents are probably still on your hard drive. You can use tools like getdatabackntfs (not free but great, there are free ones available too) to try and recover deleted information. But the more you use your laptop now the more likely it is that those deleted files will be overwritten.

However if the hard drive does have problems then you probably can't get those files back.

Mmcd · 31-08-2009 1:46pm

mickoneill30 wrote: »

What's more likely is that whatever caused you the problem in Explorer probably caused the same problem with your jpg files. You just didn't notice it at the time.

The first thing to do would be to back up whatever files you do have left.

Then your options are to run a scandisk or try and recover your documents. If your hard drive is OK then the documents are probably still on your hard drive. You can use tools like getdatabackntfs (not free but great, there are free ones available too) to try and recover deleted information. But the more you use your laptop now the more likely it is that those deleted files will be overwritten.

However if the hard drive does have problems then you probably can't get those files back.

I dont care about getting stuff back, anything anyway important wouldnt be kept on an internal HD but Id like to know what happened in case theres something more I should be doing than just reinstalling odd problems.

mickoneill30 · 31-08-2009 2:09pm

Mmcd wrote: »

I dont care about getting stuff back, anything anyway important wouldnt be kept on an internal HD but Id like to know what happened in case theres something more I should be doing than just reinstalling odd problems.

Have you run a scandisk?

Mmcd · 31-08-2009 2:15pm

mickoneill30 wrote: »

Have you run a scandisk?

Do you mean run a scan on the hard disk for errors? ......... I have done that

EKRIUQ · 31-08-2009 2:40pm

Mmcd wrote: »

Do you mean run a scan on the hard disk for errors? ......... I have done that

Have you opened the command prompt and then typed CHKDSK, it could take a couple of hours depending the number of files on your hardrive it handles some physical errors and recovers data that is still readable.

Mmcd · 31-08-2009 2:50pm

EKRIUQ wrote: »

Have you opened the command prompt and then typed CHKDSK, it could take a couple of hours depending the number of files on your hardrive it handles some physical errors and recovers data that is still readable.

It only took about 5min

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6001]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Mark>chkdsk
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is ACER.

WARNING! F parameter not specified.
Running CHKDSK in read-only mode.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
149312 file records processed.
File verification completed.
607 large file records processed.
0 bad file records processed.
0 EA records processed.
43 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
183114 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
149312 security descriptors processed.
Security descriptor verification completed.
16902 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
34878656 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.

116854783 KB total disk space.
46914196 KB in 73272 files.
59196 KB in 16903 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
257811 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
69623580 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
29213695 total allocation units on disk.
17405895 allocation units available on disk.

I think its okay but am slightly out of my depth

EKRIUQ · 31-08-2009 7:16pm

Sounds like your chkdsk only checked the file structure, you need to run chkdsk c: /r in order to check and correct bad blocks on the disk, You can get the full syntax for chkdsk by typing chkdsk /? at the command prompt.

System restore side effects?

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