One of my main network monitoring computers, a Windows XP SP2 machine, has had some major problems with lack of responsiveness this week. I can’t find any traces of malware or corruption, so I decided it was time to perform a System Restore (SR). Unfortunately, the machine froze solid each time the system restore process started.
I used XP’s System Restore diagnostics program to generate log files for troubleshooting. To run the System restore diagnostics, paste the following command, as all one line, into your Run box:
%windir%\system32\restore\srdiag.exe
This will generate a .cab file in your %windir%\system32\restore\ directory, where %windir% is the directory Windows is installed into (typically c:\windows).
Browse to your %windir%\system32\restore\ directory and open up the .cab file with your favorite compression/extraction program, such as UniExtract. You should now be able to view the associated log files.
To make a long story short, I couldn’t find the exact cause of my restoration failure, so I went ahead and just reinstalled System Restore by running the following command, as all one line, in my Windows XP Run box:
rundll32.exe advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %Windir%\Inf\sr.inf
Please note that reinstalling System Restore will remove all existing restore points!
Reinstalling SR did end up fixing my problem, but with no restore points to go back to, I just ended up re-imaging my machine.
If you ever need to manually create a restore point, run the following command, as all one line, from the Windows XP Run box:
%systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe
