This was weird

So early this morning I downloaded a beta copy of Exchange 2007 off Microsoft.com, mainly to play with it and see what it can do. I downloaded it onto my laptop which is running XP Home. After downloading that 600MB+ file my computer suddenly got quite a bit slower...applications hung and nothing worked. All my unsaved data was soon to be gone.

I cringed and rebooted, but noticed that my performance was still crap. It took forever to load up the console and view the system log, where I noted over a dozen errors...basically stating that services were shutting down one-by-one.
I ran an Antivirus tool, but found nothing and I still had plenty of hard disk space.

I couldn't figure out what the heck was going on, unless it was some hardware issue. I told it to restore to my last point which was four hours previous, hoping that might do something. I hadn't installed anything since then...except for that exchange beta file(exe).

It booted up and was working normally again. I was relieved, but noticed my exchange file was gone. Is the restore wizard suppose to remove downloaded content like exe files?

I take this as some bad omen and decided not to redownload it.

KG

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Comments

blackmage439

Interesting...

I don't remember exactly what levels the System Restore utility operates on, so I can't give you a clear answer on why it deleted the file. I'm pretty 100% positive that it does restore the registry to whatever snapshot you choose, however. I personally used S.R. a couple of times, and the results were a little interesting. I had some games installed on my family's PC, before I bought my own. After I purchased my own PC, I deleted the games installed on the family PC. Something odd happened to the family PC a while later (I guessed it was Spyware), so I tried a Sys Restore to try and remedy the problem. After the restore, I looked in the installed programs list, and noticed the games were "back." When I tried deleting them, I received an error message stating that "the program was not found..."

In your case, System Restore removed a file that had been present, and in my case it did not restore the folders under which my games were stored.

As for your Exchange issue... you didn't run the .exe did you? I find it odd that a simple act of downloading a file from a trusted site could cause an issue like that.

KGhaleon

I just assume that was the problem. The issue occured when the download finished, and disappeared after the system restore...and the file disappeared. Just seems strange.

Your case is also interesting, maybe SR doesn't fully backup applications?

KG

seuss_ssues

Understanding System Restore:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/app_system_restore_hss_understand.mspx?mfr=true

Should answer a few questions you may have about what it does and doesnt restore and so forth.

Slowhand

To elaborate on the excellent link that seuss_ssues gave us:

Microsoft wrote:

System Restore protects your personal files by not restoring any files in the My Documents folder. It also does not restore any files that use common data file name extensions, such as .doc or .xls. If you're not sure whether your personal files use common data file name extensions, and you do not want the data files to be affected by System Restore, save them in the My Documents folder.

So, it looks like System Restore will wipe out any files saved to the computer after the last restore point was created. The only ones not affected are the ones located inside the "My Documents" folder, and what Microsoft calls "common data file names", like Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, and the like. A .exe file would definitely not fall into that category, and could very well be the kind of culprit that would force you to use System Restore in the first place, so it makes sense that .exe files saved after the last restore point creation would be deleted.

KGhaleon

Thanks, that makes sense. I always thought system restore only affected system files and such. Now I've got something to worry about when using it on customer PCs.

KG