Having issues after installing a new driver? PC locking up after you installed your antivirus?

Windows System restore can help and BeYourOwnIT is going to show you how in this video.

We will be detailing how to create new restore points, when to create new restore points, and how to restore from older restore points.

Hello and welcome to a free tutorial video on the system restore feature brought to you by beyourownit.com. So we’re going to talk a little bit today about what is system restore, why you might need it, and how it can help protect you against computer lock‑ups. Well, not really lock‑ups, but issues with your computer after you add or remove a particular piece of software. What system restore is basically takes a snapshot of how your computer is at any given moment, so that you’re able to go back to it later. Why is this important? Let’s say for example you install a new antivirus software and you restart your computer and all of a sudden everything doesn’t work and it’s locking up all the time. You try to remove the software and that doesn’t really fix it. What you really want to be able to do is go back to the way things were just before you installed it and that’s what a system restore really does.

The system automatically does it, oftentimes, when it does driver updates and things like that and you can see those in the tool.

Let me show you how to get here first of all. You need to right click on My Computer, go to properties, and then choose advanced system settings. Window’s going to say you need permission, so you’re going to continue. Go to the system protection tab and here you’ll see where I’m at.

Now, it’s important to remember that this area down here, this is going to show the hard drives on your system, so you may have multiple, but the first time I did this during my dry run it took almost a minute for these to propagate. It just said, searching‑ searching‑ searching for some time. So don’t be worried if you don’t see it.

The short version of how it works is to take a quick snapshot you select the drive you want to create a backup for before you, for example, do your software install or maybe software removal, things like that, and just hit create.

Name it. So let’s say I’m going to remove an antivirus. Remove antivirus. Just name it so you can remember what you did. Create it. Now system’s going to go through and automatically create the restore print. You’d be pretty surprised how quickly it can do it and that’s what makes this feature work. In the past it took forever. Now you can create a quick, easy restore point, something that I recommend people do before they add or remove any software.

Windows, for example, will automatically do it whenever it installs drivers or things like that, but it’s important that when you manually do things that you also create restore points. As you see it’s already done. You can hit OK.

If you’re having issues and need to get to an old restore point you simply select this and it’s going to recommend one, but I always like to look at them all so you can choose a different restore point. You’re going to see the one I just did. Remove antivirus. You’ll see that I did another manual one earlier when I was doing my dry run on this video. But you’ll see the system has a scheduled one and then each time it installed Windows updates it also did backups. You can also look at ones that are older than five days if you really want to go back.

Sometimes you go back a day and it doesn’t really fix things and you go back another day and another day and another day and finally it gets fixed. The reason is sometimes when you install software it changes other things. Other pieces of software react. You may not notice a problem for a couple of days, too.

So having new restore points as a part of your general habits is really good. So, like I said, you just right click on your computer, go to properties, then system protection and you’ll see it here. If you have multiple hard drives you can create backups of those too, although it’s the most important on your C drive because that’s the thing that’s really going to get the most messed up.

So, if you have any questions about system restore or how to use it it’s something that we highly recommend getting familiar with and learning to really use a lot. If you have any questions you can always email us at support@beyourownit.com. Thanks.