System Restore
 

So,

This is a feature of Microsoft which never works on my computer unless you create a restore point manually. Like the restore points made by the computer itself never work for me...they always fail...however, all the manually added restore points work fine for me.

Have you guys ever used this feature? Have you faced the same problem?

Yeah, windows didn't put much thought into this. Go with a program made just for this, like Norton Ghost. It'll cost you around $40 but it's better than starting with a clean drive :p

I've used System Restore many times and it's never failed me yet.

raudi, you say you were left with a clean drive. What exactly happened?

System restore can be usefull but it can back up viruses,

Most big companies turn it off so they dont need to worry about viruses coming back that they just got rid off.

Just now i have it turned off just to save disk space.

System Restore usually works for me. It has helped me with a problem or two here and there.

I haven't used system restore in years. The one time I did try it, it didn't work anyways.

I think its a waste of time and disk space, so I just turn it off. I keep regular backups, and try to keep data on a different drive to the OS to make it nice and easy to salvage stuff if things do go wrong.

I never use system restore. I think it takes up too many space of my harddisk and it's not reliable. I use Ghost in DOS environment and it works like a charm. Finger crossed.