Had all kinds of problems, Recover fixed them :)

[flamenco]

Hi,
It started with my Firefox browser crashing repeatedly. Chrome worked better, but finally started to crash itself. I had gone to one suspicious website, that upon examination (too late!) contained suspicious code, probably malware. This was the only thing I could find that might have been a smoking gun.

Then along with browser crashes, blue screens of death with Page Faults, etc. I tried dozens of things to fix it after my malware scanner came up empty. (I have even gotten rid of undetectable malware before). Then I started to get Registry error messages on every reboot. Can you tell I was having a fun day with my main work machine? I spent a full day working on my R61i, thinking it might be trashed.

Then I went into my rarely used ThinkVantage utilities. At first I tried a mild restore, just replacing Windows files and leaving data files alone. Blue screen of death again! I was delighted to find ThinkVantage hardware tests, and ran pretty much all of them. I had been concerned that I might have a failing hard disk or memory. Those came up clean! So I went for the Full Monty... I did a full restore from two backups back - I figured the most recent one could still be screwed. It did a drive format, and I thought, this is just as well, in case I had a rootkit or very insidious malware.

That did it! Everything brought back to life! Very happy. Hardware seems fine, I just must have had a very torched Windows scenario. A few times in the past, I'd wondered about having such a large backup partition on my drive. Yesterday, I was very happy I had it! So kudos to Restore and Recovery, and this old workhorse could go on quite aways longer.

What a relief. I wonder what the newer Windows 7 Thinkpad machines are doing for backups.

[killer]

That's good news, flamenco.

R&R works well with Win 7 as well.

[flamenco]

Hi,
Thanks for the positive thought. As it happens, my restored machine ran smoothly for one day, then the crashes began to happen again, first browsers, then BSOD's, and finally constant Windows driver errors.

After a discussion with my local tech, I ran Memtest on my memory, and the thing seemed to lock up on one test. btw, this was after the Thinkpad's quickie memory tests all passed fine. So memory seemed like a good bet. I bought a 2G stick and replaced the 1G - this was a very easy repair job, btw, compared to doing a fan replacement like I did 2 months ago! With the handy PDF manual running on my other machine, it took about 5 minutes, just take the battery off (presumably a precaution, it's nowhere near the memory), take off the wristrest, pop the old one out, pop in the new one, bing bing bada bing!

So far the patient is running very smoothly, and I'm enjoying the doubled RAM! So this old workhorse will last awhile longer!

Thanks, Dave

[Tõnis]

Congratulations on getting your machine fixed. I have a few general R&R questions.

My system has been running very well since my last system/Windows reload, and I just made a backup file for the first time. I saved it to my hard disk. Where is it stored? On the hidden R&R partition? And if my system becomes FUBAR, can I restore it from that backup file to look exactly the way it looked the day I made the backup file, settings and all? Also, R&R gives the option to create a DVD. Does selecting that option simply create a copy of the same file on DVD media?

[RealBlackStuff]

You should store your backup externally, on e.g. a removable hard disk, or on your PC.
If your laptop HD dies, you got nothing!

[Tõnis]

I guess that's a compelling reason to use the DVD option. Thanks, RBS, for replying.