Erunt vs. System Restore

  • Thread starter Thread starter ms
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M

ms

In the past, I recall some negative comments about System Restore. I have
been using Erunt. BTW, I use W2K, but this is a very active newsgroup, that
one has low activity. I assume any answer for XP will also work for W2K.

Is there a advantages/disadvantages comparison of the two methods?

TIA

ms
 
Win 2K does not have System Restore, so Erunt is a good precaution for
registry backup.
As far as XP goes, System Restore does more than Erunt in that it backs up
system files as well as the registry. Erunt can be of some value as System
Restore may fail on occasion if the SR repository is corrupted, though SR is
generally a good feature.
 
GTS said:
Win 2K does not have System Restore, so Erunt is a good precaution for
registry backup.
As far as XP goes, System Restore does more than Erunt in that it
backs up system files as well as the registry. Erunt can be of some
value as System Restore may fail on occasion if the SR repository is
corrupted, though SR is generally a good feature.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that's the data I needed. I have another computer with XP Pro, will
look into System Restore

ms
 
ERUNT can also be of value in the cases where you just want to restore the
prior registry, and not lose some files that were added since the last
restore point. System Restore (when restoring) has this rather nasty habit
of deleting some monitored files it thinks should be deleted that were added
since the last restore point, unless you have saved them in the "proper"
designated locations (like My Documents).
 
It would be better to post these questions in the proper Windows 2000
groups. You can easily backup the Windows 2000 registry by creating an
Emergency Repair Disk and selecting the option to back up the registry
at the same time, the registry will be backed up in the
%systemroot%\repair\RegBack directory (usually C:\WINNT\repair\RegBack).

John
 
ms said:
In the past, I recall some negative comments about System Restore. I have
been using Erunt. BTW, I use W2K, but this is a very active newsgroup,
that
one has low activity. I assume any answer for XP will also work for W2K.

Is there a advantages/disadvantages comparison of the two methods?

TIA

ms
Click to expand...

System Restore (SR) would be the prefered method as it does somewhat more
than 'backup' the Registry. However, System Restore is an 'incremental'
system that means if an error occurs in any of the updates you will be
unaware of the error until you come to do a 'restore' when SR will fail. In
other words, SR is unreliable. In my opinion any 'backup' or protection
system that is unreliable is useless.

On the other hand ERUNT provides a complete and standalone backup of the
Registry and will allow you to select which backup to restore, something I
have found to be invaluable.

In summary I suppose you might consider using both SR and ERUNT.
Generally, the principal value of both programs is to be able to restore the
Registry to a previous healthy system, the additional features offered by SR
are, in my view, insignificant especially when its inherent lack of
reliability is considered.
 
Edward said:
System Restore (SR) would be the prefered method as it does somewhat more
than 'backup' the Registry. However, System Restore is an 'incremental'
system that means if an error occurs in any of the updates you will be
unaware of the error until you come to do a 'restore' when SR will fail.
Click to expand...

Only Incremental???? Well, wait a minute. This gives the impression
that if you choose to run System Restore to create a restore point, it
depends on the previous ones, which, AFAIK, is not true. AFAIK, System
Restore saves the complete registry as it is, right then and there, and, in
that respect, is similar to ERUNT.

However, it *also* saves some other (monitored) files too, which can be an
advantage - or a disadavantage, at least in some cases (as I mentioned
before).
 
Edward said:
System Restore (SR) would be the prefered method as it does somewhat more
than 'backup' the Registry. However, System Restore is an 'incremental'
system that means if an error occurs in any of the updates you will be
unaware of the error until you come to do a 'restore' when SR will fail. In
other words, SR is unreliable. In my opinion any 'backup' or protection
system that is unreliable is useless.
Click to expand...

That isn't how it works Ed. A Restore Point takes a "snapshot" of the
system "as it is" at the time of the snapshot, it doesn't rely on
previous or on subsequent snapshots. You can have snapshots going back
in time as far as you want them, providing that you have the available
disk space required to store the snapshots. That however is a bit
pointless because restoring to points older than a few weeks is almost
never a good idea, restore points are mostly only useful to undo very
recent actions.
On the other hand ERUNT provides a complete and standalone backup of the
Registry and will allow you to select which backup to restore, something I
have found to be invaluable.
Click to expand...

As I said earlier, System Restore does the same thing, with exception of
the SAM database, System Restore will not back up the SAM Hive nor will
it restore old passwords. System Restore is much more comprehensive
than Erunt, it backs up things that Erunt doesn't, it is closer to a
System State Backup than a simple registry backup. As with System
Restore, using Erunt to restore the registry to a version that is more
than a few weeks old is usually not a very good idea.

Generally, the principal value of both programs is to be able to restore the
Registry to a previous healthy system,
Click to expand...

Not true, System Restore does more than simply restore the Registry, it
also restores important system .dll's and the COM+ database.

the additional features offered by SR
are, in my view, insignificant especially when its inherent lack of
reliability is considered.
Click to expand...

Completely untrue, System Restore is a very useful tool and it is
reliable if it is used for its intended purpose. The problem some users
have with System Restore is that they don't understand what System
Restore is and they think that it is a backup solution or that it can be
used to restore the System State Data to a "pristine" previous state, it
cannot do that, it does not replace a good System State backup. If
you think that System Restore is unreliable then I invite you to use
Erunt and restore an old registry on your machine then com back here and
tell us the results! Erunt is a very good tool but it does not do what
System Restore does nor does it replace it.

John
 
ms said:
In the past, I recall some negative comments about System Restore. I
have been using Erunt. BTW, I use W2K, but this is a very active
newsgroup, that one has low activity. I assume any answer for XP will
also work for W2K.

Is there a advantages/disadvantages comparison of the two methods?

TIA

ms
Click to expand...

Thanks to all, some information to digest.

ms
 
ms said:
Thanks to all, some information to digest.

ms
Click to expand...

There actually is quite a bit to digest.
A short summary of all of this is basically that System Restore is much more
comprehensive in its capabilities. But ERUNT can be a handy, auxiliary
tool, in some cases, and so I end up using both.
 
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