Cannot ENABLE System Restore. Help!

Hello Mike.. You wrote:

"In future may I please suggest that you start a new thread rather than
hijacking another especially given that your problem is not the same as that
of the original poster."

OK.. Here we go; new thread. You are right. It should have been treated
as a new topic.


"I'm worried that you have restored a five month old copy of your
registry as this will mean that you will now need to reinstall any programs
and updates that you had made to your system since that date due to the loss
of their associated registry entries."

Actually.. The registry restore only caused a couple of application
shortcuts to be without proper destination. I refreshed those links
manually. My desktop dispaly/theme also reverted to something I had set up
several months ago. I fixed that.


"One reason for no recent registry backups could be that at sometime you
unchecked the ScanRegsitry (scanregw) entry in
MSConfig | Startup (Start, Run, enter MSConfig in the box and click OK). If
that is the case I would suggest you check the ScanRegsitry box so as to
ensure that scanregw is run each time you boot your system."

Yes.. I know about that one. Scanregw was and is checked.


"If you cannot uncheck the disable SR entry found at System |
Performance | File System | Troubleshooting check the following: Do you have
at least 300MB of free space on the drive containing your windows folder?"


I have over 14gig hdd free space. BTW... NOW the SR entry is UNCHECKED. I
did not do anything except the scanreg /restore of the Feb 3 '04 rb###.cab
file a few days ago.


"Is the *StateMgr entry still present and checked in MSConfig |
Startup?"

YES.


"Is stmgr.exe running? You can check this using either a Task Manager
such as WinTop or TaskInfo or by using MSInfo32 (or Start | Help & Support |
System Information) and checking for stmgr.exe in the section Software
Environment | Running Tasks."

YES.


"If all of the above are OK then I think that the best way forward would
be to remove the _RESTORE folder and allow the state manager to rebuild the
necessary control files which have probably become corrupted. Delete the
folder as follows: ..."

YES. I had tried that BEFORE doing the scanreg /restore of the rb###.cab
file that I mentioned earlier. But then the SR entry for "Disable System
Restore" was still "checked" and still wouldn't cooperate.


"It might now be a good time to test that system restore is working
correctly. You can do this by performing the following test. a) Create a
shortcut on your desktop to a file. b) Create a manual checkpoint Could you
create a checkpoint? 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? "

THANKYOU for this suggestion. But before I proceeded to try that, I noticed
some new developments: the RB###.cab files are being created daily, the
_RESTORE\TEMP and \ARCHIVE folders seem to be showing recent dates once
again, and I was able to create a restore point this morning! I did
NOTHING since the RB###.cab restore except change my Desktop theme to
something else. I do not entirely like the current theme, but sofar...
things seem to be cooperating now! The WinME system is still lacking the
two security updates that the RB###.cab restore eliminated.

SO.. either the 2 security updates are at fault, or the Theme was the
culprit. ??? What do you think? I do not remember when I applied the 2
security updates exactly.

Anyway.. now the "drop-down" History in IE is working, and drop-down
history when using "Run.." is working too. I had lost those two functions
several months ago when I "Cleared History.." (and wrote about it in here),
but now they are suddenly back again.


========================================

aa wrote:

"Mike M" wrote in message
...
Now that's a new one, it's normally the other way, in other words
users can't get system restore to switch back on!

Hello Mike.. I have just recently discovered that I cannot enable
system restore. Maybe you (or anyone else) can help me.

I am not sure when restore stopped working. But when I noticed the
problem a few days ago, the checkmark in "Disable System Restore"
would always re-establish itself on the next reboot. I have explored
the various KB#'s and Q#'s notes at MSKB for this problem. I do not
have an insufficient diskspace problem. There is over 14gig free on
my 40gig hdd. I followed the all the methods in Q303354 (except for
Method 2 because I don't have the registry value that they mention).

Then I decided to do a scanreg /resore and pick the last known good
RB###.cab. I discovered that the last created file was on Feb 3rd,
2004 ! I was a bit surprised by that. But I picked that one
anyway... all seemed to go well. Apart from a couple of my shortcuts
now outdated and not working (fixed them manually later), I noticed
that KB832894 and KB837009 needed re-installing according to the MS
Update site. The LACK of those two updates has caused the drop-down
History in IE to start working again! I am rather pleased about
that. And I also noticed that the checkmark for "Disable System
Restore" is now UNchecked. I can configure the slider to adjust the
diskpace (I moved it to about 1gig), so that means it appears to be
working, but WinME still does not allow me to create restore points.

The _RESTORE\ARCHIVE contains a RG*.CAB file and three other log
files, and the \TEMP directory contains *.CPY files that include
recent dates.

I haven't reinstalled the 832894 or 837009 updates yet.

So.. what else can I try?