Tech Blog

Ever wish you could undo a particular driver or application installation? I have, recently in fact when I installed Adobe CS3 on my wife's Windows 7 /XP dual-boot computer. Something happened in that install that pooched the Flash plugin for Internet Explorer. It could have been a bad scene, except for a cool little feature of Windows 7, one that has been a part of the Windows OS since ME (so there was one good thing about ME).

So, I had a few options:

1. Spend time surfing the net to find others who had similar problems and see what they suggest
2. Manually update the browser plugins again, even though they were the latest
3. Ask her to keep working in XP (not really an option)
4. Use Adobe's un-installer to remove everything, except the stuff that gets left behind
5. Use that funky Restore Point feature I'd heard so much about since Windows ME, but never used (you can see where this is going)

I'll take option 5 Alex
A System Restore point is a 'snapshot' of important Windows 7 and application registry settings, installer-installed applications, support files and parameters. A System Restore point is not the same as a system backup, think of it as a record of the changes in the systems settings some data files. It is highly recommended that you make a system restore point prior to installing new software -- this I did.

The story so far
So, I've got a non-functioning Flash plugin somewhere in IE. I'm going to roll back the system to the state it was in (minus any changes to data files) prior to my installation of CS3. Of course, to be completely covered, I made a backup of essential data files before taking the next step -- yes, I'm paranoid with my wife's data How-to restore to a previous system restore point

Open your Start button menu (lower left corner, big friendly round Windows button)

You'll see the menu change to show something like this.

You want to click the Control Panel Action Item that says 'Restore your computer to an earlier time' - awkward sentence structure but it works. Or Restore system files and settings from a restore point...it works too.

Then click on the Open System Restore button (you should be doing this as administrator).

Now you'll want to Choose a different restore point -- this will open a window that will give you more control over which restore point you want to restore from.

In my case, I just selected the most recent restore point, the one I made before installing the software, and started the restore process.

How long it takes depends on how much work needs to be done reverting the system -- in my case, about 10 minutes.

Then, a quick reboot and it's as if the installation never happened...Window's doesn't know about it. In some situations there may be a few files and folders left over, but if you paid attention to the application install process, deleting them is an easy process.

Automated, you say
System Restore Points are a really neat way to further protect your system from unanticipated issues, say by an automated patch being applied in a system upgrade. Windows 7 pays attention to the type of changes made by software and patches being installed, and makes it easy to 'undo' a wayward system upgrade, when you really need it.