Turning off System restore - Major attitude

In your above article you say "Disable System Restore temporarily (WinXP & WinME only) if you are infected; Any trojans, spyware, etc. you may have picked up could have been saved in System Restore and are waiting to re-infect you. Since System Restore is a protected directory, your tools can not access it to delete files, trapping viruses inside."

If you don't turn this off the trojans and spyware can't get back on your system unless you do a "system restore to earlier date" - CORRECT?
This is something I have wondered about.

I am somewhat concerned about turning it off because all restore points are lost. If I run all these programs and get rid of what they say I will have no way to restore my system if a problem occurs after running them. Is my thinking correct?

Thanks again

 

Continue on your line of thought. If you restore points are infected. what good are they?

 

Yes, they are no good. I basically do not want to have to lose everthing on my computer and have to completely restore it from the factory disk if the programs delete something critical. If the programs work and get rid of the spyware I would then disable it and start new on restore points. Doesn't this make sense?

 

I follow you there.. But you should also make an image of your system when it's clean. This way, if it gets over-run with spyware that you just can't seem to get rid of , you can backup any new data and restore from the image leaving you with less work to do to reconfigure your pc.

 

That makes sense tho I am not sure how to do that. However do you know the answer to this question "If you don't turn system restore off can the trojans and spyware can't get back on your system only if you do a "system restore to earlier date" - CORRECT?"

 

If you don't turn sys restore off, and they are infected, you run the risk of reinfection wether you restore or not.

 

Thanks KODO I didn't know that.