Norton GoBAck (Roxio)

I would like an informed answer from someone who uses Norton GoBack which is made by Roxio. - - I run WinMe and I have System Restore but it has never ever worked, not even once. When I mark and pick a restore point I have never been able to restore. I always get the message that my system cannot be restored. It is useless. I do back my computer up with Ghost regularly, but it is so much easier to just go back and for those that System Restore works for love it. - - GoBAck replaces System Restore and this is my main question. Can you go forward with goback. In other words say you go back a week or two and find your system is working fine. Can you move forward until you actually find the date it quit or some program quit working. The reason I ask this is because many times you may run a program that failed and you don't know exactly when it failed because you simply don't use it everyday. Then there are the times you don't even know what program has failed.

 

Yes, you can go all the way back after going back to the marked file right before the last one you had. I found the PDF file finally and read it. GoBAck a pretty slick program but it has some serious faults. GoBack stores your data in up to 20% of your hard drive and depending on the amount you use everyday you usually have between one and two weeks of going back. I guess for the average guy it is enough, but I am always trying out new software and programs and have a bad habit of not deleting them after trying them out. I prefer to go back a lot further than that sometimes. Thus, just having several backups would be better. I do that now. Sometimes I will just format my hard drive and do a restore from a backup months ago and then just put back what software I wanted. It is a lot better than uninstalling because no matter how hard you try too many programs leave reminants on your system that just aren't deleted gobbling up space. As a matter of fact, Norton products are highly looked down on because they just do not uninstall properly as others . I have uninstalled individual Norton programs a few times and couldn't even boot back up into windows because Norton errors come up asking for it's file and it is supposed to be gone. I always get it back but could see where some would panic and reformat and restore their hard drives.

 

IMHO, and in my experience ANY Norton product does not interact well with WinME. If I were you I would strive to get your system restore going. I'll see what I can find for you......

 

While I'm searching........

Right click on My Computer>click on properties>click on performance tab>Under Advanced Settings, click on file system>click on troubleshooting tab>be sure that "Disable System Restore" does NOT have a tick beside it. If it does un-tick it and re-start your computer.

 

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303354

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;267951

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;275646

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;264887



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Thanks for the reply, the first article I believe will work on my restore problems. Actually, I had many problems with Norton over the years with Win98, but it has worked well with ME for me. Norton likes a clean install. I love Norton Ghost and use it on a regular basis. As far as the other utilities, I have had, the later Norton such as NortonSystemWorks 2002 and recently upgraded to NortonSystemWorks2003 but find they are more a pain so I only installed NAV and Ghost2003. I only purchased SystemWorks2003 because it was the most inexpensive way to get ghost 2003, well under $10 and a year worth of free updates. Norton Ghost 2003 is working well and I only upgraded because I wanted to use my DVD burners for backups and Ghost 2002 wouldn't support DVD drives properly. Although many complain about WinME, both it and Win98 always have run flawlessley for me and I have three computers with ME on it now. They all have multiple hard drives, scanners, multiple printers, network cards, card media readers, two with Capture and tV boards like ATI Wonder Pro, etc. They all have a standard CDRW burners in them and a DVD burner also. A couple have a DVD reader and a DVD burner because I like to make DVD copies on the fly. I make archive Backups of every movie we buy and really beat on these computers. WinMe has served fine so far. I do build all my own computers though and buy really good motherboards which certainly probably helps. - - Thanks again for the help. I am going to remove GoBack from the computer I was trying it out on because it just doesn't supply me with enough time line I prefer. The only problem I have encountered with WinMe is it is so touchy with networking. I network all my comuters together to file share. Sometimes I have trouble with Network neighborhood, but generally it works ok. I never had network problems with Win98.

 

I have Norton GoBack on Windows 98 and you can configure how much data you want to store, which by default is 20% per drive. Changing this allows you to retain stored data for longer with bigger portion of the disk or less if you wish. However, in order to change this you need to uninstall and reinstall GoBack thus losing the current set of restores.

 

Yes, that being said as you mention I believe makes System Restore a better choice. For example, I backup my new movies all the time and make copies. Generally, a movie is in the 6 to 8 gig range. This can really eat up that 20% by default GoBack creates. This will only make the history file of GoBack become less of a time period to recover, especially if I forgot to remove some movie files after I backed up. For anyone who never really needs to go back more than a week or two then GoBack is probably a good program. However, removing and having to re-install it all the time to provide a new history record when the storage becomes full is just a pain in the neck it seems to me.