Q: As a subscriber to your online PC Utilities magazine, first I would like to congratulate you on an excellent publication. But now for the first time and after trying myself I would like to ask your professional help in solving a problem I discovered recently. I cannot make a system restore. I always get an error message stating that the restore cannot be completed as no changes have been made. Some time ago I cleaned my system with the program TuneUp. Perhaps this program deleted something in the registry? As one cannot test immediately everything after a cleanup I only found out this problem now. But as my storage time in the Rescue Center was set to only three months every change is now gone. I would dread to reinstall Windows with all my programs. Is there a way to repair the problem? I would greatly appreciate your help.
I also read several articles on the Net about system cleaners. There are warnings abound to use them with caution. They often delete files which are needed by Windows. In spite of the file descriptions you get in most cases one still does not know if this registry entry can be deleted or not if you aren’t a system specialist.
I would appreciate your professional opinion on this subject. And what cleaner if any would you recommend?
TuneUp Utilities automatically cleans up restore points to release disk space unless you tell it not to. It will also recommend that the system restore service is turned off in order to free up system resources, so we’re guessing that’s what’s happened here. Turning it back on is simple enough, right-click on My Computer and choose Properties, click the System Restore tab, clear the Turn off System Restore check box and click OK. There’s no way to get your old restore points back, so you need to start again. Create a new restore point by going to Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Restore. On the welcome page click Create a Restore Point.
If it still doesn’t work, go to Start, All Programs, Administrative Tools, Computer Management. Click Services and Applications, then click Services and double-click System Restore Services from the list and ensure its startup type is set to Automatic.
There are lost of good system cleanup tools around. Try Comodo System Cleaner for a general system cleanup or iSysCleaner Pro to target junk files. If you’re cleaning up registry entries it’s always worth backing up the registry or creating a restore point beforehand.
TuneUp Utilities will delete old restore points unless you tell it not to
Originally featured in PCU124
