Why is System Restore not placed the proper place?

[Curt]

Today a girlfriend came with her laptop and said, "I thought I was opening a picture my son had emailed me, and suddenly all these things and flares came up...". Sigh!

Luckily, "all" I had to do was to tell (Vista) System Restore to do its job. [Edited: and here I forgot to tell that F8 did not do anything!] However, this turned out to be really really difficult, almost impossible! The pop-us were blocking my every attempt to do anything. I literally clicked "no" and "yes" almost a thousand times before I somehow finally managed to start System Restore.

This leads me to my simple question: Why on earth must I start an infected system, in order to start a blocked program, in order to clean the infected system? To me, this is far too much Catch 22: "If your system is blocked, open your system and use System Restore. If System Restore is blocked, use System Restore" - a no-win situation! Why isn't System Restore placed next to Log-in??? Is there a reasonable explanation to this? Or is it that everybody involved are imcomp... ehh (edited, due to peace, love and understanding): ...or is it that no one involved could imagine this situation?

Why is System Restore not placed the proper place? Or is it? Where is the proper place for System Restore? Next to Log-in?

[4wd]

Press F8 and either try:

a) Last Known Good working state (or something like that), or
b) Boot to Command Line and run System Restore, (%systemroot%/system32/restore/rstui.exe - for XP).

Or:

c) Windows 7 has a System Recovery disc that you created after installing W7....right?, or
d) Restore from your periodic backup, or
e) Boot from a PE, (WinPE/BartPE), disc to repair the problem, or
f) Download a anti-virus LiveCD to try and repair, (eg. CureIt).

Booting from Windows installations discs will also give you recovery options, (eg. XP->Repair Console from which you can manually copy the registry from a backup).

Personally, I'm glad System Restore isn't easy to get to because of the few times I've used it, it's always FUBAR'd my system so that I've had to reinstall anyway.

Why isn't System Restore placed next to Log-in???

-Curt (January 23, 2011, 04:59 PM)

I can just imagine this:

"I was logging into my computer but because I wasn't fully loaded on caffeine yet I hit the wrong button and now my system is FUBAR."

[Curt]

-no, no and no!!! F8 was in the old days! It is not like this any more! My computer from Siemens and her computer from Dell does not respond to F8. Oh, why didn't I think to tell this in the initial post. There are millions, no zillions of computers that does not do anything at all on F8.

[Curt]

Didn't my first line state that it was a lady who couldn't tell a picture from a program? Please don't tell about a hundred useless solutions! I actually updated her Vista to SP2, if you know what I mean.

[4wd]

-no, no and no!!! F8 was in the old days!

-Curt (January 23, 2011, 05:25 PM)

It's not actually, taken from the F8 screen on my Win7HP computer less than 5 minutes ago:

Didn't my first line state that it was a lady who couldn't tell a picture from a program? Please don't tell about a hundred useless solutions! I actually updated her Vista to SP2, if you know what I mean.

-Curt (January 23, 2011, 05:31 PM)

And, no you said:

Today a girlfriend came with her laptop and said, "I thought I was opening a picture my son had emailed me, and suddenly all these things and flares came up...". Sigh!

At no point did you say it was an executable, (it could has been a link to a website or something else), and also at no point did you say what OS she was running until the last post.

EDIT: Sorry, you did mention Vista in the first post - I missed it, apologies.  

Still the answers I gave are valid in the context of the thread, (except for the XP one).

And:

This leads me to my simple question: Why on earth must I start an infected system, in order to start a blocked program, in order to clean the infected system?

-Curt (January 23, 2011, 04:59 PM)

My answers c->f give you the option of not booting the infected OS.  Plus you can still boot from a Windows installation disc into recovery options.

Also, BTW, the main reason I've found for computers not responding to F8 is because people aren't fast enough to push the key or don't at the right moment.  Also W7, (and possibly Vista) no longer blatantly advertise it's presense as XP did.

[cmpm]

Either keep tapping F8, or when you see the progress bar to start windows, shut it off by the power button or plug. Then you can get to the screen in 4wd's post.

Start in safe mode and it will ask you if you want to use system restore first.

Malwarebytes should clean that problem.
I've had it and heard it before.

[4wd]

Either keep tapping F8, or when you see the progress bar to start windows, shut it off by the power button or plug.

-cmpm (January 23, 2011, 06:36 PM)

Except sometimes you end up filling up the keyboard buffer so then all it does is beep at you, although I can't say I've noticed it with my USB keyboard.

I usually try F8 immediately after the various drives are recognised.

[Curt]

It doesn't help me or her that your pc is using F8, when the problem was that her and my pc does not. I can assure you that I tapped F8 many times.

But, well, the thread's subject was lost, so I will leave it here.

[40hz]

@Curt - make yourself a Vista Recovery Disk for next time you encounter this problem.

   1. Click Start button
   2. Click All Programs and select Maintenance
   3. Select Create a Recovery Disk from dropdown menu
   4. Load blank CD or DVD media
   5. Click on Create Disk

Just boot off the disk and select system recovery.



It's pretty much self-explanatory. But full details of what each option does can be found here.
 

[nudone]

are there really machines out there that deliberatly don't respond to F8 on boot-up?

this sounds more like a hardware issue. could it be a usb keyboard not being detected during the boot process (something disabled in the bios maybe).

other than that, there really ought to be an easier way to restore - it wouldn't kill microsoft to make the "help" system extremely obvioius during boot-up. (or does it, maybe i've just become blind to it.)

[4wd]

are there really machines out there that deliberatly don't respond to F8 on boot-up?

this sounds more like a hardware issue. could it be a usb keyboard not being detected during the boot process (something disabled in the bios maybe).

-nudone (January 24, 2011, 01:31 AM)

Good point, I completely forgot some motherboards don't respond to a USB keyboard unless USB Legacy Mode^w is enabled in the BIOS.
Some motherboards don't enable it by default which, IMHO, is stupid considering the need to get into the F8 menu at some point.

[40hz]

Good catch!  Disabled USB Legacy Mode is the most likely culprit. On some mobos, USB keyboards won't be recognized until the OS loads. Especially when the PNP-aware operating system option is enabled on those boards that have it.

You run into that problem so seldom these days that it's easy to forget it still exists.

[Curt]

-can this perhaps be the reason that when I did a system restore on my own computer, Windows started by asking me to tell what language my keyboard was using?


However, her Dell computer did not ask me that question.

[techidave]

I have a few Dell Vostro 3500 laptops that take a rather hard tap on the F8 key to go into safe mode and also a hard tap on the F2 key to get into the BIOS.

If you just tap softly, then it will give you the impression that the F8 doesn't work.   

[4wd]

-can this perhaps be the reason that when I did a system restore on my own computer, Windows started by asking me to tell what language my keyboard was using?

-Curt (January 24, 2011, 05:47 AM)

No, because at that point Windows has loaded and the USB keyboard will already have been enabled as a device, more than likely the keymapping was lost and Windows has recognised it's not a 'standard' US keyboard so has asked for identification.

Not having USB Legacy Mode turned on in BIOS will result in a USB keyboard not being enabled until the OS has loaded, (as 40hz said).
It will, however, result in any keypresses being ignored until Windows does load.

[Stoic Joker]

One other thing not mentioned, is if you have one of those multi-media (wizBang) keyboards, it may default to some other function for the function keys.

I fought with this for over an hour once, because the keyboard had F8 (as well as all the other FUnction keys) remapped to do misc media functions.