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Tutorials - Windows System Restore

Windows System Restore is a double edged sword, in some cases it can save your machine by undoing corrupted installations and get you back to a bootable machine and this is a good thing...but...all the makers of spyware, trojans, viruses and adware know this and use it to resurrect their nasty stuff on re-boot. Some Windows files are important so System Restore protects them by un-doing any changes every re-boot, unfortunately this can be exploited for malicious reasons with ease. In order to clean malware out of your PC it must be switched off and prevented from logging the removal of malware by Spybot or any other removal application.

To turn it off do the following

1. Start > Control Panel then click on "Switch to Classic View" (top left)

2. Should look like the screen below - click on the "System" Icon.

3. Click on the System Restore Tab as shown.

4. Tick the "turn off system restore on all drives" then OK ignore any further warnings just OK it.

This will remove system restore data from your PC so you can remove malware without the risk of it coming back on reboot. After removal you can turn System Restore back on by reversing the above process. I leave it off permanently and use Acronis Drive Image to restore my machines should I need to, image files cannot be fooled into restoring stuff that should not be there..

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