System restore

[ljutic26s]

Ok. I have been using Retrospect that came bundled with my NetGear Ready NAS NV+. This is my computer at home. It is a Dell Dimension 8400 running windows XP Media center edition. Service pack 3 with all current microsoft windows updates. My problem is that I have been having network reliability issues with this computer, not hardware related. I figure must be an issue with windows. I wish to reload windows XP on this machine. I can either replace with original or change to XP professional (32 bit). I am not a computer "dummy" so to speak but I have really no experience using Retrospect or other back-up software. I am pretty sure that I will have to get whichever windows XP versions completely upto date and get all Retrospect updates as well. Then once I have done this how do I proceed to restore my system to as before state without restoring the same Windows "bug" as before?

[MRIS]

how do I proceed to restore my system to as before state without restoring the same Windows "bug" as before?

 

Well, this is the 64 million dollar question alright.

 

The dilemma is caused because you want to restore your entire computer including all windows settings, yet you suspect something about those settings was causing the problem.

 

My advice is to confirm that replacing the operating system with a vanilla install really does result in the problem being gone. There are two possibilities:

1. the problem isn't gone.

- this means that the configuration of your operating system wasn't to blame, so restore the whole PC from the backup and look elsewhere for a solution, eg try another port on your switch etc

2. the problem is gone.

- this means that some OS setting was causing the problem as you suspected. if this is the case you are advised to restore only the data from the backups, and you will have to re-install all your applications manually.