Windows 7 Restore and Recovery

Apart from the dramatic improvement in performance, Windows 7's restore and recovery capabilities are pretty solid too. It's possible and easy to perform a restoration from the current, perhaps broken state, to a previously working state using these capabilities.

If you need to recover your system to a previous state, you can perform the following steps:

1. Click on "Start", "Programs", "Accessories", "System Tools" and then "System Restore", in that order.

2. Wait a while as Windows analyzes which point to restore to.

3. Windows 7 will suggest to you a restore point. If you are happy with this restore point, or that it is a restore point in which current Windows problems do not exist, accept the suggestion and Windows will start the restoration.

4. If you would prefer to see more restore points, click on the option to see more. Choose a restore point that you are satisfied with.

5. The restoration process will take a while, so you may want to grab a coffee while the computer works.

6. After the restoration is complete, you can test the machine by running a few applications and making sure everything is ok.

After this, it is a good idea to perform optimization on the Windows registry. The registry is a central database of information that stores settings and other data that Windows and applications use for proper operation. Due to the nature of the registry and bad programming practices, the registry will grow in size as obsolete information gets abandoned in it, resulting in errors.

Registry cleaner software can search through the entire registry for problems, fix them and optimize it. This results in a more stable environment and an increase in performance.