When all other lines of defense fail, and something (or maybe someone) messes up your computer to the point that you can’t even find the problem, let alone fix it… what do you do?
If you’ve got a backup of your hard drive, it’s no problem to recover everything. But if you don’t, we all know you’re in for all kinds of time- or money-consuming problems. But the truth is that most of us are too lazy to back up everything on a regular basis.
An easy way to prevent loss of files and data is to use system rollback software. If you have some kind of problem with your computer, you can roll your system back to a time before the problem happened.
Windows XP comes with a system rollback utility called System Restore, but you have to remember to make and store recovery disks for it, and it only rolls back critical system files and leaves other data alone.
There are other, more powerful system rollback utilities you can purchase separately. The one I use is the PC Magazine Editor’s Choice, GoBack 3 Deluxe from Symantec (formerly made by Roxio). It costs $30, and it has saved my bacon more than once.
It can restore your hard drive and all your files, including data files. This is great because, if you accidentally changed or deleted a file you needed, you can restore it using GoBack. It automatically saves “safe points” to go back to when the system isn’t busy, either at certain time intervals or when important changes to the system, such as program installation or uninstallation, are made.