I’ve been using Avast home for a couple years now and I’m still unable to get WinME’s system restore to generate automatic restore points.
Yes, I know - WinME !!! : :-[ Hey, it works for me. ;D
There have been many posts regarding Avast Home breaking WinMe’s restore
(eg: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=14823.0)
Has anyone found a solution? (Free copies of WinXP glady accepted - contact me for mailing address.)
The problem is certainly not major. I can create restore points manually and they last for a while. Avast is more than worth this minor hitch.
The Windows System Restore is not something I like to rely on, it isn’t perfect and I would much rather rely on my own recovery strategy of taking regular hard disk images and daily data file, email, favourites, address book, etc. back-ups. So if any thing major occurs, I restore the last weekly image (a few minutes) and restore any daily back-ups that the last image didn’t cover, total time minimal and virtually 100% (nothing in life is 100%).
Even Microsoft is about to abandon support for WinME (perhaps this is the catalyst to encourage you to upgrade) so the same is going to be true of other commercial software manufacturers.
There are many, many reasons why a System Restore may fail. For example, see “Why are previous restore points not working?” in the “Troubleshooting” section of this official Microsoft page: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/plan/faqsrwxp.mspx, although this is for XP (nothing to be found re ME’s system restore, there may be some relevant information to winME.
There’s lots more on that page that’s worth reading too. Note especially the sections on “Does System Restore protect personal data files?” (the short answer: no); “What should I do if System Restore does not work?”; “Why are my restore points missing or deleted?”; “Why does the System Restore Wizard lockup?”; and so on. Just a few minutes on that page ought to convince just about anyone that System Restore is not intended for heavy-duty system protection!
:-[ Hey, it works for me. ;D