Question

I had a trojan virus on my laptop, I downloaded an antivirus program, moved all viruses to a 'vault' and I can now not restart my computer. I tried to do a system restore. It gave me dates to choose from and I chose on from about a week ago. Nothing changed. I then tried it again figuring I would choose an earlier date, and it now tells me that there are no restore points available. What now????

Answer

A computers System Restore points could be deleted by any of the below possibilities. Unfortunately when the system restore points are deleted or removed they cannot be recovered.

1. The Microsoft Windows XP System Restore option was disabled on the computer.
2. The computers hard disk drive is out of disk space or low on disk space. Additional information about determining how much disk space is on the drive can be found on document CH000369 (http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000369.htm).
3. Microsoft Windows has been reinstalled.
4. The restore point reached is maximum age of 90 days.
5. The 'Clean up' option under the Disk Cleanup has been ran. When this option is performed it will remove all restore points.
6. The computers version of Microsoft Windows has been upgraded to a newer version of Windows. The Windows System Restore option is not designed to revert your computer back to an older version of Windows and when an update is ran it will disable any previous system restores.

Additional information about the System restore is also found on the below page.
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000589.htm