System Restore

After my PC (with WinME) has run for awhile, if I attempt to start System
Restore from Help and Support, it displays the message "System Restore cannot
run until you restart the computer. Please restart the computer, and then
run System Restore again." After restarting the PC, System Restore does
start, but has no restore points. The PC idles a lot, and has been used
several days in a row, so you'd think it had enough down time to set the
normal restore points. When I attempt to enter a manual restore point, I get
this message:

! An error has occurred in the script on this page.
Line: 63
Char: 5
Error: Object doesn't support this property or method
Code: 0
URL: res://rstrui.exe/SRUI-ConfRP.htm
Do you want to continue running scripts on this page? Yes/No

Either answer blocks any further inputs. I can delete the System Restore
GUI and start over from Help and Support repeatably with the same result.

Any suggestions? Thanks!
--
Joe

Joe,

What follows are various ramblings, with the first part related to the
reboot message and lack of checkpoints after which I comment about the
message you are seeing when attempting to create a check point. I would
start with 2) and only follow my comments at 1) if 2) doesn't solve the
problem.

1) Reboot message and lack of checkpoints
When you attempt to start system restore (whichever method you use is
immaterial) and you see the message about restoring your PC, open Windows
Explorer and look to see whether you have a file name wininit.ini in your
Windows folder. If yes, then that is the reason for the message as the
presence of this file indicates that the system is in the middle of an
install or uninstall and has yet to complete the job which will be done
when the system next boots at which point the instructions contained in
wininit.ini will be processed and the file renamed wininit.bak.

So if this is the case the question now becomes what is it that is
creating the wininit.ini file and why. Do you have some clean up utility
installed that is being used to perhaps delete index.dat or other "in use"
files each time the system boots? This same utility could also be the
reason why you have no restore points as it is cleaning them.

Have a look at the contents of wininit.ini, it is a plain text file and
can be opened using notepad. It will have one of more lines where a file
is either deleted or renamed. What are the files as knowing this might
help identify what is creating the wininit.ini file and what it is doing.

2) Error message when attempting to create a manual checkpoint.

Try resetting system restore which has in the past been all that is
required to fix this somewhat rare error message which is, I think, due to
a damaged system restore configuration file (my records show less than 10
reports in four
years).

To reset system resto
System | Performance | File System | Troubleshooting and check "Disable
System Restore", Apply and IMMEDIATELY reboot. This will flush you
restore
folder and erase all checkpoints, then,
System | Performance | File System | Troubleshooting and uncheck "Disable
System Restore", Apply and again IMMEDIATELY reboot. This should now
automatically create a new checkpoint immediately following the restart.
Finally adjust the space allocated to the restore folder,
System | Performance | File System | Hard Disk and adjust the restore
slider
to your preferred setting. A figure of 200MB is normally more than
adequate
for day to day use allowing perhaps a week of checkpoints to be available
although increasing this to perhaps 400-500MB for a few days during
periods of
large installs such Microsoft Office is advisable.

Please try the following quick check and see how far you get and what
messages you see.
a) Create a shortcut on your desktop to a file (any file).
b) Create a manual checkpoint
Could you create a checkpoint? If not what error message did you see?
c) Delete the shortcut
d) Restore your PC to the checkpoint you created.
Was the shortcut restored? Did you see any error messages?
e) Reboot your PC
Was the checkpoint retained?

Please post back with details of how you get on.
--
Mike Maltby



Joe wrote:

After my PC (with WinME) has run for awhile, if I attempt to start
System Restore from Help and Support, it displays the message "System
Restore cannot run until you restart the computer. Please restart
the computer, and then run System Restore again." After restarting
the PC, System Restore does start, but has no restore points. The PC
idles a lot, and has been used several days in a row, so you'd think
it had enough down time to set the normal restore points. When I
attempt to enter a manual restore point, I get this message:

! An error has occurred in the script on this page.
Line: 63
Char: 5
Error: Object doesn't support this property or method
Code: 0
URL: res://rstrui.exe/SRUI-ConfRP.htm
Do you want to continue running scripts on this page? Yes/No

Either answer blocks any further inputs. I can delete the System
Restore GUI and start over from Help and Support repeatably with the
same result.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

Hi, Mike,

Your 2) fix seems to have worked as advertised. I now have a system
checkpoint at the time of the system restore reset, my manual checkpoint from
b) of the little test, and a new checkpoint from the end of the restore test.
(And the shortcut was restored.)

I didn't think to check out the wininit.ini from your first discussion since
you said to do the restore reset first. I wish I had, for curiousity if
nothing else. In any event it's not there now and I haven't seen that
problem today. The system restore reset must have cleaned up the whole
thing. Thank you very much!
--
Joe


"Mike M" wrote:

Joe,

What follows are various ramblings, with the first part related to the
reboot message and lack of checkpoints after which I comment about the
message you are seeing when attempting to create a check point. I would
start with 2) and only follow my comments at 1) if 2) doesn't solve the
problem.

1) Reboot message and lack of checkpoints
When you attempt to start system restore (whichever method you use is
immaterial) and you see the message about restoring your PC, open Windows
Explorer and look to see whether you have a file name wininit.ini in your
Windows folder. If yes, then that is the reason for the message as the
presence of this file indicates that the system is in the middle of an
install or uninstall and has yet to complete the job which will be done
when the system next boots at which point the instructions contained in
wininit.ini will be processed and the file renamed wininit.bak.

So if this is the case the question now becomes what is it that is
creating the wininit.ini file and why. Do you have some clean up utility
installed that is being used to perhaps delete index.dat or other "in use"
files each time the system boots? This same utility could also be the
reason why you have no restore points as it is cleaning them.

Have a look at the contents of wininit.ini, it is a plain text file and
can be opened using notepad. It will have one of more lines where a file
is either deleted or renamed. What are the files as knowing this might
help identify what is creating the wininit.ini file and what it is doing.

2) Error message when attempting to create a manual checkpoint.

Try resetting system restore which has in the past been all that is
required to fix this somewhat rare error message which is, I think, due to
a damaged system restore configuration file (my records show less than 10
reports in four
years).

To reset system resto
System | Performance | File System | Troubleshooting and check "Disable
System Restore", Apply and IMMEDIATELY reboot. This will flush you
restore
folder and erase all checkpoints, then,
System | Performance | File System | Troubleshooting and uncheck "Disable
System Restore", Apply and again IMMEDIATELY reboot. This should now
automatically create a new checkpoint immediately following the restart.
Finally adjust the space allocated to the restore folder,
System | Performance | File System | Hard Disk and adjust the restore
slider
to your preferred setting. A figure of 200MB is normally more than
adequate
for day to day use allowing perhaps a week of checkpoints to be available
although increasing this to perhaps 400-500MB for a few days during
periods of
large installs such Microsoft Office is advisable.

Please try the following quick check and see how far you get and what
messages you see.
a) Create a shortcut on your desktop to a file (any file).
b) Create a manual checkpoint
Could you create a checkpoint? If not what error message did you see?
c) Delete the shortcut
d) Restore your PC to the checkpoint you created.
Was the shortcut restored? Did you see any error messages?
e) Reboot your PC
Was the checkpoint retained?

Please post back with details of how you get on.
--
Mike Maltby



Joe wrote:

After my PC (with WinME) has run for awhile, if I attempt to start
System Restore from Help and Support, it displays the message "System
Restore cannot run until you restart the computer. Please restart
the computer, and then run System Restore again." After restarting
the PC, System Restore does start, but has no restore points. The PC
idles a lot, and has been used several days in a row, so you'd think
it had enough down time to set the normal restore points. When I
attempt to enter a manual restore point, I get this message:

! An error has occurred in the script on this page.
Line: 63
Char: 5
Error: Object doesn't support this property or method
Code: 0
URL: res://rstrui.exe/SRUI-ConfRP.htm
Do you want to continue running scripts on this page? Yes/No

Either answer blocks any further inputs. I can delete the System
Restore GUI and start over from Help and Support repeatably with the
same result.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

Joe,

I don't think that you would have found a wininit.ini file but
nevertheless you can still look and see if you have a wininit.bak file in
your Windows folder. The last modified time stamp will tell you when your
system last used the wininit mechanism to delete or move a file that is
normally locked when Win Me is running.

I'm pleased to read that my fix, simple as it was, helped you repair your
system. Don't worry about the first section of my previous reply. I
rather stupidly started writing my reply before I had read all of your
post and initially thought that the problem was simply one of your being
told of the need to reboot the system each time you wanted to use system
restore. Reading the rest of your post, which BTW was an excellent post
containing all the required information to help find the cause of the
problem, then told me the problem was unlikely to be caused by the
presence of a wininit.ini file but rather by a more general problem with
system restore's current configuration files. Files which are rebuilt by
disabling and then re-enabling system restore.

Thanks for the feedback and glad to have been of some help.
--
Mike Maltby
MS-MVP Windows



Joe wrote:

Hi, Mike,

Your 2) fix seems to have worked as advertised. I now have a system
checkpoint at the time of the system restore reset, my manual
checkpoint from b) of the little test, and a new checkpoint from the
end of the restore test. (And the shortcut was restored.)

I didn't think to check out the wininit.ini from your first
discussion since you said to do the restore reset first. I wish I
had, for curiousity if nothing else. In any event it's not there now
and I haven't seen that problem today. The system restore reset must
have cleaned up the whole thing. Thank you very much!