The Problem:

There is a lot of software available today, especially in the form of freeware and shareware. Unfortunately, not all of it is good software. It may do its primary job–find a recipe, drill you in French verbs, let you play a new game–but at the same time it may be muddying up the works in your PC and corrupt critical system files needed to boot your computer. First, little things start going wrong. Then more and more problems crop up until your once perfectly good PC needs a lot of tender loving care.

The Solution:

A rollback program designed to restore your computer to a previous healthy state offers an easy answer. Of course, you have to use the rollback program wisely. Rollback programs can track any changes made to your computer as it works. They do this by automatically taking “snapshots” of your system. Then, if your computer crashes due to a software conflict, faulty installation, user error, or virus attack, you can run the rollback program, essentially undoing the changes made to your computer until it returns to its prior healthy condition.

Rollback programs can also retrieve previous versions of files or documents that have been deleted or overwritten, without doing an entire disk rollback. They can sequentially move back through the various versions of a saved document. Some rollback programs only save the changes you make rather than saving the entire document. This helps you save a lot of disk space instead of clogging up your hard drive with many versions of the same thing.

If you’re running Windows ME or XP, you have a rollback program. Look for it under “System Restore”. If you don’t have a built-in rollback program, the following are a few of those on the market.

ConfigSafe (http://www.imaginelan.com/)

FlashBack (www.aladdinsys.com)

Norton GoBack (http://www.symantec.com/)

EasyRestore (www.powerquest.com)

Undelete (www.execsoft.com)

Rollback or system restore programs can only work as well as you let them. When you configure the program, choose your restore points carefully. These are the points where the rollback program will automatically take a snapshot. Try to set up regular and consistent restore points.

Also, remember to manually set a restore point before you install any new software, especially free software, software available from the web, and fun, new games. Once the new software is working without undue effect on the rest of your system, set another restore point.

Another thing to keep in mind is the well-known axiom: garbage in, garbage out. Although a rollback program helps you recover from a catastrophe, it doesn’t prevent problems from happening in the first place. To do this, as we’ve said repeatedly before, you’ve got to have a firewall and antivirus protection that is up to date. If your computer is infected with a virus, your restore program will include that virus in the snapshot unless you can roll back to a virus-free time. If you don’t find the right recovery point, you could conceivably restore your PC back to a state that contains a virus.

It may even be necessary to disable your antivirus solution when installing a rollback program.

More information on rollback programs can be found at:

http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,36589,00.asp

http://www.imaginelan.com/configsafe/

http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/
0,10738,2855908,00.html

James Kerr is President/CEO of SuperGeeks, a Hawaii-based computer service and repair company (www.supergeeks.net). Please feel free to send your questions, comments and suggestions to Mr. Kerr. He can be reached at kerr@supergeeks.net and 942-0773.