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suspect recent changes caused the problem,
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image) of the hard drive. If necessary to wipe/
format a hard drive, an image can restore the
entire contents of a hard drive; the operating
system, programs, and personal files. Some
backup programs also provide the option to
create an image.
While the terms image and clone are often
used interchangeably, the exact definition of
clone is when two hard drives are installed in a
computer and data is copied from old to new,
which requires that the original hard drive is
still working. The last time I purchased a new
hard drive, it came with a version of True Im-
age software that provided this capability and I
was up and running in a short period of time
with all of my user ids, programs, data and set-
tings.
When creating a system image most flash
drives will be too small so you will need an ex-
ternal hard drive. Depending on the size of the
external hard drive, multiple images can be
saved to the same drive. Name the image (or
the folder you save it in) so you can identify
when it was created and, if you have multiple
computers, which computer it was created
from. The program used to create the image
prompts you to create a bootable flash drive,
which only has to be done once. You boot the
computer from the flash drive and it contains
the software to restore the image from the ex-
ternal drive. If you have multiple computers,
you may need to create a bootable flash drive
for each computer. In most cases, an image or
clone can’t be used to restore to a different
computer, although some software may sup-
port this.
Another term discussed was System Restore.
This option usually requires being able to boot
into Windows. System Restore can be used if
the computer isn’t working correctly and you
APCUG itself is not a user group; only user
groups themselves are members. APCUG’s
product and service are offered to group
leaders, who can then share them with their
members.
8
or as an initial troubleshooting step, before
resorting to recovery. Make sure system re-
store is turned on. After upgrading from Win-
dows 7 to Windows 10, I discovered that sys-
tem restore had been turned off. Windows au-
tomatically creates restore points before per-
forming certain actions. You can manually
create a restore point, e.g., before installing
new software.
To access system restore, search for system
and click create a restore point. It should open
System Protection under System Properties.
Under Protection Settings, it will list the drives
on the computer and whether protection is on
or off. Normally, you just want protection on
for (C:). If it is not on, click Configure and turn
it on. Make sure the percentage of disk space
available for system restore is set to some-
thing other than 0, 10% should be good in
most cases.
To create a restore point, click Create and fol-
low the prompts. To revert to a previous re-
store point, click System Restore… , click
Next. To see more restore points, click to
place checkmark in box to left of “Show more
restore points”. Click the restore point you
want to use and click Next. If you know when
the problem started, chose the restore point
just before that date/time. If you don’t know
which restore point to use, start with the most
recent and, if that doesn’t fix the problem, run
System restore again and choose a different
restore point. System restore is not supposed
to affect your personal files, but make sure
your backup is current, just in case.
In some cases, system restore fails and Win-
dows automatically returns the computer to
how it was before system restore ran. There is
also an option to undo a system restore.
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