System Restore issue

The size thing was a possible guess, such as maybe the writing of the undo
exceeded the size limit.
Current sizes are a little over 3GB for store and the current used space on
C for the restore folder is about 1.5 GB. The undo operation appears to have
dumped all previous data because I see only one point created this morning.
Because of this and a wild guess of the amount of data moved I likely broke
the 3 GB limit.

Also I am uncertain how the external drive might have effected the outcome.
I disconnect it during such operation and most of the time, trying to avoid
a problem with losing something from it. System restore warns that it
detects the drive is missing and wants to know if it should continue, which
I do. How does system restore handle the missing drive?


"Mike M" <No_Spam.TakeThisOut@Corned_Beef.Only> wrote in message
news:%23diKul5UIHA.4532@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> Norman <nthums1.TakeThisOut@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > I ran system restore for checking something.
> > I had copied some files to E: prior to the restore and they
> > disappeared. OK. I ran undo last restore and they did not come back.
>
> This could because of their sizes and the amount of space allocated to the
> restore archive. Note that in Win Me, unlike XP, there is just the single
> archive which is on C which is used to archive files regardless of their
> original location and drive. Also, unlike XP, system restore has just he
> two options, to monitor all drives or none, it cannot be turned off on a
> drive by drive basis although it can be hacked to exclude folders. I
> prevented SR from monitoring drives other than the system drive by putting
> all folders and files on other drives in a top level folder that I
> manually excluded from SR.

How do you manually exclude? Does that work for all subs of that top level
folder or are you restricted to one level?
I found this somewhat informative but not sure of accuracy.
http://users.iafrica.com/c/cq/cquirke/sr-sfp.htm

I followed the wininit.ini link and scrolled up to scandisk.ini.
Reading that seems to confirm some of my concerns about scandisk, which is a
different issue.

I'm guessing that the section of filelist.xml that gets edited is
- <DIRECTORIES>
- <Exclude>
But uncertain of the syntax to exclude drive top level folders.

Norman

>
> > What might the problem be?
>
> See above comment/question regarding file sizes and store size.
>
> > Should I clear my system restore by turning off and deleting it's
> > archive?
>
> Only if you think that SR is broken however there's never anything to be
> lost by clearing down the archive occasionally.
>
> > Will this give me a fresh start in case something is
> > corrupted?
>
> I'm unclear as to what you think might be corrupted but a fresh start will
> rebuild the control files which are based on the file filelist.xml and
> rebuilt each time SR is enabled..
> --
> Mike Maltby
> mike.maltby.TakeThisOut@gmail.com
>
>
>

Norman <nthums1.DeleteThis@comcast.net> wrote:

> The size thing was a possible guess, such as maybe the writing of the
> undo exceeded the size limit.
> Current sizes are a little over 3GB for store and the current used
> space on C for the restore folder is about 1.5 GB. The undo operation
> appears to have dumped all previous data because I see only one point
> created this morning. Because of this and a wild guess of the amount
> of data moved I likely broke the 3 GB limit.

I'm sorry to read that this caused you to loose data. The one global
archive with all the associated file moving from other drives to the root
archive is one of the major problems with Win Me's system restore. This
being one of the reasons why I excluded all my top level folders other
than C:\Windows and C:\Program Files from SR's embrace when running Win
Me.

> Also I am uncertain how the external drive might have effected the
> outcome. I disconnect it during such operation and most of the time,
> trying to avoid a problem with losing something from it. System
> restore warns that it detects the drive is missing and wants to know
> if it should continue, which I do. How does system restore handle the
> missing drive?

This depends. Ideally SR should ignore all external drives but this isn't
always the case. Does the drive have a _RESTORE folder containing a
single byte file srdiskid.dat? If yes then the drive is being monitored
and SR globally will be reset if a different drive letter is allocated to
the drive other than that stored in srdiskid.dat. If the drive is missing
it shouldn't reset SR, What resets SR is if a drive is added that wasn't
previously monitored (thinks - that statement might not be true, memory
lapse) or if a drive is enumerated to a different drive letter than before
as determined by the system comparing the current enumerated drive letter
and the contents of the file srdiskid.dat on each drive (that _is_ true).

> How do you manually exclude? Does that work for all subs of that top
> level folder or are you restricted to one level?

Everything below the folder specified is included or excluded as
appropriate.

> I found this somewhat informative but not sure of accuracy.
> http://users.iafrica.com/c/cq/cquirke/sr-sfp.htm

That's Chris Quirke's site and is very much based on discussions I had
with him six or seven years ago.

> I followed the wininit.ini link and scrolled up to scandisk.ini.
> Reading that seems to confirm some of my concerns about scandisk,
> which is a different issue.

This has nothing to do with system restore. Are you thinking here about
the ability to set scandisk to create more than five back-up copies of the
registry? These are stored as rb*.cab files in the folder
C:\Windows\Sysbckup and have nothing to do with system restore which makes
and stores its own copy of the registry together with wininit.ini and
system.ini each time it creates a checkpoint.

> I'm guessing that the section of FileList.xml that gets edited is
> - <DIRECTORIES>
> - <Exclude>

Correct

> But uncertain of the syntax to exclude drive top level folders.

[drive]:\[folder]
have another look at FileList.xml for an example of a folder entry such as
those for TMP and TEMP folders. Note you can explicitly specify the drive
or use the wildcard * such as is used to exclude all top level TMP folders
regardless of the drive on which they are located. What you cannot
however do is exclude a drive by adding an entry such as [drive]:\ I made
life easy for myself by having a top level folder named DATA on each drive
and excluding *:\Data from SR's embrace

Note the need to remove the FileList.xml entry in FileList.xml. I haven't
read Chris's page for some time but if he mentions sfpdb.sfp there is no
need to alter or touch this file in any way. This file is used to index
the catalogue versioning and hash information from the catalogues used by
SFP for many SFP protected files and should not be altered or removed
otherwise SFP will not protect the files in the way it should. All that
is ever necessary is to add or remove entries in FileList.xml. Further it
is not possible to configure SFP to fully protect additional files from
modification although it is trivial to add or remove a file, folder or
file type from SR's embrace.

So in summary, edit FileList.xml to remove the entry to itself and name
say FileList.new. [Disable SR - I honestly cannot remember if this step is
necessary at this point] Boot to DOS using a floppy. Rename FileList.xml
to say FileList.old and FileList.new to FileList.xml. Remove floppy and
reboot [and re-enable SR if disabled]. You can now edit FileList.xml and
save it without SFP kicking in and restoring the old copy. Once you have
made the required changes reset SR to rebuild the control files which will
then incorporate the changes you made to FileList.xml.

Be prepared to experiment. Don't try to run before you can walk. Start
by just excluding one folder and test that after resetting SR that SR is
no longer monitoring the contents of the folder. For example, create a
shortcut in the unprotected folder and another in a protected folder.
Make a checkpoint. Delete both shortcuts. Use SR to roll back to the test
checkpoint you made before deleting the two shortcuts. Note that in the
protected folder the shortcut should have been restore but not that in the
unprotected folder.
--
Mike Maltby
mike.maltby.DeleteThis@gmail.com

"Mike M" <No_Spam.DeleteThis@Corned_Beef.Only> wrote in message
news:u%23%23A$6%23UIHA.536@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Norman <nthums1.DeleteThis@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > The size thing was a possible guess, such as maybe the writing of the
> > undo exceeded the size limit.
> > Current sizes are a little over 3GB for store and the current used
> > space on C for the restore folder is about 1.5 GB. The undo operation
> > appears to have dumped all previous data because I see only one point
> > created this morning. Because of this and a wild guess of the amount
> > of data moved I likely broke the 3 GB limit.
>
> I'm sorry to read that this caused you to loose data. The one global
> archive with all the associated file moving from other drives to the root
> archive is one of the major problems with Win Me's system restore. This
> being one of the reasons why I excluded all my top level folders other
> than C:\Windows and C:\Program Files from SR's embrace when running Win
> Me.
Appreciate the sorry but not crying over spilt milk. Some of it was so long
ago it long dried up, but now I at least understand some of the behavior
that occurred after rebuilding the system and hooking up the external. That
is you have to see the external drives before you can change drive letters.
Your idea of exclusion sounds good but could get a little tricky if updates
to exclusions are needed. No restore to them if all does not go well,
although there are few that do not install to \Program Files.

>
> > Also I am uncertain how the external drive might have effected the
> > outcome. I disconnect it during such operation and most of the time,
> > trying to avoid a problem with losing something from it. System
> > restore warns that it detects the drive is missing and wants to know
> > if it should continue, which I do. How does system restore handle the
> > missing drive?
>
> This depends. Ideally SR should ignore all external drives but this isn't
> always the case. Does the drive have a _RESTORE folder containing a
> single byte file srdiskid.dat? If yes then the drive is being monitored
> and SR globally will be reset if a different drive letter is allocated to
> the drive other than that stored in srdiskid.dat. If the drive is missing
> it shouldn't reset SR, What resets SR is if a drive is added that wasn't
> previously monitored (thinks - that statement might not be true, memory
> lapse)

The external is being monitored.
No reset if drive is missing, that seems to be true if memory is correct and
verified by current full backup.
That backup, about a month old, was a copy of one drive to the other using
Seagate utiliy. But since I wanted to look at both drives, comparing what
took place, I left both hooked upon reboot. That obviously wiped the system
restore from the not primary partition. Switched via BIOS. And I really need
to physically switch connections to make sure I'm OK with the now unhooked
drive. I left both hooked up for a few days and had some weirdness with
restore, but don't remember exact details. But do remember I did not get the
expected copy of the partition holding data to both drives and manually did
copy from external drive. I may have even checked to see if system restore
was working and again broke the limit.


or if a drive is enumerated to a different drive letter than before
> as determined by the system comparing the current enumerated drive letter
> and the contents of the file srdiskid.dat on each drive (that _is_ true).

So when I unhooked the second drive it dumped the restore upon reboot. That
sounds right by memory. I did not take careful notes of action and reaction.

>
> > How do you manually exclude? Does that work for all subs of that top
> > level folder or are you restricted to one level?
>
> Everything below the folder specified is included or excluded as
> appropriate.
>
> > I found this somewhat informative but not sure of accuracy.
> > http://users.iafrica.com/c/cq/cquirke/sr-sfp.htm
>
> That's Chris Quirke's site and is very much based on discussions I had
> with him six or seven years ago.
A feather in your hat.

>
> > I followed the wininit.ini link and scrolled up to scandisk.ini.
> > Reading that seems to confirm some of my concerns about scandisk,
> > which is a different issue.
>
> This has nothing to do with system restore. Are you thinking here about
> the ability to set scandisk to create more than five back-up copies of the
> registry?
No, but thinking about exactly what he said of possible dire circumstances
related to auto scandisk at startup. Leaving no trace of damaged file which
you might possibly determine what the file originally was.
And that brings up another possible twist. With so much under the no touch
umbrella of system restore, less chance of rolling back to a good file.
And if you get the crash, reboot, scandisk condition, it seems it might be
prudent to run a restore followed by a scandisk where you have complete
control over action and logging?

These are stored as rb*.cab files in the folder
> C:\Windows\Sysbckup and have nothing to do with system restore which makes
> and stores its own copy of the registry together with wininit.ini and
> system.ini each time it creates a checkpoint.
>
> > I'm guessing that the section of FileList.xml that gets edited is
> > - <DIRECTORIES>
> > - <Exclude>
>
> Correct
>
> > But uncertain of the syntax to exclude drive top level folders.
>
> [drive]:\[folder]
> have another look at FileList.xml for an example of a folder entry such as
> those for TMP and TEMP folders. Note you can explicitly specify the drive
> or use the wildcard * such as is used to exclude all top level TMP folders
> regardless of the drive on which they are located. What you cannot
> however do is exclude a drive by adding an entry such as [drive]:\ I made
> life easy for myself by having a top level folder named DATA on each drive
> and excluding *:\Data from SR's embrace
>
Thanks. I had for awhile moved the My Documents to the archive partition
which worked well, at least for awhile. But that got messy with hooking and
unhooking drives. Gee, I wonder why, now a little better educated. Seems it
might be best to manually move data, leaving folder structure on C:, just in
case I need to fall back to default. At least one program I have expects
that to be the store (My Documents), but can be redirected.

> Note the need to remove the FileList.xml entry in FileList.xml. I haven't
> read Chris's page for some time but if he mentions sfpdb.sfp there is no
> need to alter or touch this file in any way. This file is used to index
> the catalogue versioning and hash information from the catalogues used by
> SFP for many SFP protected files and should not be altered or removed
> otherwise SFP will not protect the files in the way it should. All that
> is ever necessary is to add or remove entries in FileList.xml. Further it
> is not possible to configure SFP to fully protect additional files from
> modification although it is trivial to add or remove a file, folder or
> file type from SR's embrace.
>
> So in summary, edit FileList.xml to remove the entry to itself and name
> say FileList.new. [Disable SR - I honestly cannot remember if this step is
> necessary at this point] Boot to DOS using a floppy. Rename FileList.xml
> to say FileList.old and FileList.new to FileList.xml. Remove floppy and
> reboot [and re-enable SR if disabled]. You can now edit FileList.xml and
> save it without SFP kicking in and restoring the old copy. Once you have
> made the required changes reset SR to rebuild the control files which will
> then incorporate the changes you made to FileList.xml.

Oh boy. system crashed with VXD error and lost writing. Gee can I remember
all that written.

I was writing that I may have found a way around boot disk. Emptied Recycle.
Unfortunately I discovered that going to the icon in each partition shows 2
files under properties.
That seems to be a problem?
Copied filelist.xml to My Documents, named old, opened in wordpad and cut th
e line for it, pasting in exclude section, saved as xml.
Cycled system Restore. One new restore point. Rebooted to safe and copied
file to system\restore. Checked file in SFP and it had automatically copied
to that location. Boot normal and all looked OK, with external drive.
Created another restore and then booted to safe with external drive.

Windows assigned lettering as if two internal drives and that killed restore
points.
If booted to safe and then hook up drive, it is not detected. So back to
windows.

W/ Ext, edited filelist to exclude "*:\SAFE 1232" and a couple of other top
level folders. Copied to restore and verified, reboot process to be sure.
Created shortcuts at root of E: internal and V& W roots, external. And in
folders changed in filelist. Create restore point. Delete shortcuts created.
Reboot not adding external. Ran restore, expecting it to complain that
external partitions were missing, but it did not.. Then hooked up external.
Of course nothing changed on external, but it restored all to E:
Double check filelist.xml. Emptied Recycle. Unhooked external and ran undo
restore. And something happened with resore points that did not seem normal,
but did not make note of it. Or was it Recycle behavior, ???
So start over at making shortcuts at roots and in excluded folders. This
includes the subs of the excluded, right?
Create Restore, delete shortcuts, and not empty Recycle. Reboot process (
refers to that I unhook external via tray tool and phsically, then reboot,
and once I get to the first windows screen, it is safe for me to hook up USB
external drive without drive letter mash.)
Run restore with modified process. At shutdown point of reboot, disconnect
USB drive, and plug back in at that first windows screen.

I think I found all files restored and then check recycle where I found
several hidden files via what I wrote above. Started writing this and at
break it went blue screen.

Reboot, auto scan disk. Trying to bring this back to previous point and that

seems now. SAVE!

W/O ext. C: recycle showed 8 files under properties but looked empty.
Hooked up external and checked all partitions for shortcuts and recycle
bins. Shown are no shortcuts and 2,2,8,4, &6 files under the bins
properties. OK, what is this?

Starting over with a cycle of system restore.

That seems to be it. That is a cycling of system restore is necessary after
editing filelist.xml or so it seems.

That is that system restore did not put the shortcuts back into the excluded
folders.
And an undo of last restore removed shortcuts on the root of the drives.
But the recycle bin is still an area of concern. Icon shows it has files, I
did not empty it of shortcuts after deleting them.
And I have the empty option, but opening it shows no files. And it says
there are no files in it.

The partitions where I made no shortcuts, if I choose properties of Recycle
Bin on them, they show the 2 file situation that seems broken prior to
modding filelist.xml.
The other three partitions where shortcuts were created and then deleted
each have 4 files listed under properties. But, there would have been 6
deleted shortcuts plus the two phantom ones before I started the
modification.

Can you help me with this problem?

Thanks for all the help so far.
Norman

>
> Be prepared to experiment. Don't try to run before you can walk. Start
> by just excluding one folder and test that after resetting SR that SR is
> no longer monitoring the contents of the folder. For example, create a
> shortcut in the unprotected folder and another in a protected folder.
> Make a checkpoint. Delete both shortcuts. Use SR to roll back to the test
> checkpoint you made before deleting the two shortcuts. Note that in the
> protected folder the shortcut should have been restore but not that in the
> unprotected folder.
> --
> Mike Maltby
> mike.maltby.DeleteThis@gmail.com
>
>

> That seems to be it. That is a cycling of system restore is necessary
> after editing filelist.xml or so it seems.

This is essential as System Restore and SFP do not directly use
FileList.xml but rather their control files in the C:\_RESTORE folder and
these control files are (re)built from FileList.xml each time that SR is
reset.

Recycle bin. This is possibly/probably because it contains references to
items that are in the bin on drives no longer present. Resetting the
Recycle Bin should resolve this.
--
Mike Maltby
mike.maltby DeleteThis @gmail.com


Norman <nthums1 DeleteThis @comcast.net> wrote:

> "Mike M" <No_Spam DeleteThis @Corned_Beef.Only> wrote in message
> news:u%23%23A$6%23UIHA.536@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> Norman <nthums1 DeleteThis @comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>>> The size thing was a possible guess, such as maybe the writing of
>>> the undo exceeded the size limit.
>>> Current sizes are a little over 3GB for store and the current used
>>> space on C for the restore folder is about 1.5 GB. The undo
>>> operation appears to have dumped all previous data because I see
>>> only one point created this morning. Because of this and a wild
>>> guess of the amount of data moved I likely broke the 3 GB limit.
>>
>> I'm sorry to read that this caused you to loose data. The one global
>> archive with all the associated file moving from other drives to the
>> root archive is one of the major problems with Win Me's system
>> restore. This being one of the reasons why I excluded all my top
>> level folders other than C:\Windows and C:\Program Files from SR's
>> embrace when running Win Me.
> Appreciate the sorry but not crying over spilt milk. Some of it was
> so long ago it long dried up, but now I at least understand some of
> the behavior that occurred after rebuilding the system and hooking up
> the external. That is you have to see the external drives before you
> can change drive letters. Your idea of exclusion sounds good but
> could get a little tricky if updates to exclusions are needed. No
> restore to them if all does not go well, although there are few that
> do not install to \Program Files.
>
>>
>>> Also I am uncertain how the external drive might have effected the
>>> outcome. I disconnect it during such operation and most of the time,
>>> trying to avoid a problem with losing something from it. System
>>> restore warns that it detects the drive is missing and wants to know
>>> if it should continue, which I do. How does system restore handle
>>> the missing drive?
>>
>> This depends. Ideally SR should ignore all external drives but this
>> isn't always the case. Does the drive have a _RESTORE folder
>> containing a single byte file srdiskid.dat? If yes then the drive
>> is being monitored and SR globally will be reset if a different
>> drive letter is allocated to the drive other than that stored in
>> srdiskid.dat. If the drive is missing it shouldn't reset SR, What
>> resets SR is if a drive is added that wasn't previously monitored
>> (thinks - that statement might not be true, memory lapse)
>
> The external is being monitored.
> No reset if drive is missing, that seems to be true if memory is
> correct and verified by current full backup.
> That backup, about a month old, was a copy of one drive to the other
> using Seagate utiliy. But since I wanted to look at both drives,
> comparing what took place, I left both hooked upon reboot. That
> obviously wiped the system restore from the not primary partition.
> Switched via BIOS. And I really need to physically switch connections
> to make sure I'm OK with the now unhooked drive. I left both hooked
> up for a few days and had some weirdness with restore, but don't
> remember exact details. But do remember I did not get the expected
> copy of the partition holding data to both drives and manually did
> copy from external drive. I may have even checked to see if system
> restore was working and again broke the limit.
>
>
> or if a drive is enumerated to a different drive letter than before
>> as determined by the system comparing the current enumerated drive
>> letter and the contents of the file srdiskid.dat on each drive (that
>> _is_ true).
>
> So when I unhooked the second drive it dumped the restore upon
> reboot. That sounds right by memory. I did not take careful notes of
> action and reaction.
>
>>
>>> How do you manually exclude? Does that work for all subs of that top
>>> level folder or are you restricted to one level?
>>
>> Everything below the folder specified is included or excluded as
>> appropriate.
>>
>>> I found this somewhat informative but not sure of accuracy.
>>> http://users.iafrica.com/c/cq/cquirke/sr-sfp.htm
>>
>> That's Chris Quirke's site and is very much based on discussions I
>> had with him six or seven years ago.
> A feather in your hat.
>
>>
>>> I followed the wininit.ini link and scrolled up to scandisk.ini.
>>> Reading that seems to confirm some of my concerns about scandisk,
>>> which is a different issue.
>>
>> This has nothing to do with system restore. Are you thinking here
>> about the ability to set scandisk to create more than five back-up
>> copies of the registry?
> No, but thinking about exactly what he said of possible dire
> circumstances related to auto scandisk at startup. Leaving no trace
> of damaged file which you might possibly determine what the file
> originally was.
> And that brings up another possible twist. With so much under the no
> touch umbrella of system restore, less chance of rolling back to a
> good file.
> And if you get the crash, reboot, scandisk condition, it seems it
> might be prudent to run a restore followed by a scandisk where you
> have complete control over action and logging?
>
> These are stored as rb*.cab files in the folder
>> C:\Windows\Sysbckup and have nothing to do with system restore which
>> makes and stores its own copy of the registry together with
>> wininit.ini and system.ini each time it creates a checkpoint.
>>
>>> I'm guessing that the section of FileList.xml that gets edited is
>>> - <DIRECTORIES>
>>> - <Exclude>
>>
>> Correct
>>
>>> But uncertain of the syntax to exclude drive top level folders.
>>
>> [drive]:\[folder]
>> have another look at FileList.xml for an example of a folder entry
>> such as those for TMP and TEMP folders. Note you can explicitly
>> specify the drive or use the wildcard * such as is used to exclude
>> all top level TMP folders regardless of the drive on which they are
>> located. What you cannot however do is exclude a drive by adding an
>> entry such as [drive]:\ I made life easy for myself by having a top
>> level folder named DATA on each drive and excluding *:\Data from
>> SR's embrace
>>
> Thanks. I had for awhile moved the My Documents to the archive
> partition which worked well, at least for awhile. But that got messy
> with hooking and unhooking drives. Gee, I wonder why, now a little
> better educated. Seems it might be best to manually move data,
> leaving folder structure on C:, just in case I need to fall back to
> default. At least one program I have expects that to be the store (My
> Documents), but can be redirected.
>
>> Note the need to remove the FileList.xml entry in FileList.xml. I
>> haven't read Chris's page for some time but if he mentions sfpdb.sfp
>> there is no need to alter or touch this file in any way. This file
>> is used to index the catalogue versioning and hash information from
>> the catalogues used by SFP for many SFP protected files and should
>> not be altered or removed otherwise SFP will not protect the files
>> in the way it should. All that is ever necessary is to add or
>> remove entries in FileList.xml. Further it is not possible to
>> configure SFP to fully protect additional files from modification
>> although it is trivial to add or remove a file, folder or file type
>> from SR's embrace.
>>
>> So in summary, edit FileList.xml to remove the entry to itself and
>> name say FileList.new. [Disable SR - I honestly cannot remember if
>> this step is necessary at this point] Boot to DOS using a floppy.
>> Rename FileList.xml to say FileList.old and FileList.new to
>> FileList.xml. Remove floppy and reboot [and re-enable SR if
>> disabled]. You can now edit FileList.xml and save it without SFP
>> kicking in and restoring the old copy. Once you have made the
>> required changes reset SR to rebuild the control files which will
>> then incorporate the changes you made to FileList.xml.
>
> Oh boy. system crashed with VXD error and lost writing. Gee can I
> remember all that written.
>
> I was writing that I may have found a way around boot disk. Emptied
> Recycle. Unfortunately I discovered that going to the icon in each
> partition shows 2 files under properties.
> That seems to be a problem?
> Copied filelist.xml to My Documents, named old, opened in wordpad and
> cut th e line for it, pasting in exclude section, saved as xml.
> Cycled system Restore. One new restore point. Rebooted to safe and
> copied file to system\restore. Checked file in SFP and it had
> automatically copied to that location. Boot normal and all looked OK,
> with external drive. Created another restore and then booted to safe
> with external drive.
>
> Windows assigned lettering as if two internal drives and that killed
> restore points.
> If booted to safe and then hook up drive, it is not detected. So back
> to windows.
>
> W/ Ext, edited filelist to exclude "*:\SAFE 1232" and a couple of
> other top level folders. Copied to restore and verified, reboot
> process to be sure. Created shortcuts at root of E: internal and V& W
> roots, external. And in folders changed in filelist. Create restore
> point. Delete shortcuts created. Reboot not adding external. Ran
> restore, expecting it to complain that external partitions were
> missing, but it did not.. Then hooked up external. Of course nothing
> changed on external, but it restored all to E:
> Double check filelist.xml. Emptied Recycle. Unhooked external and ran
> undo restore. And something happened with resore points that did not
> seem normal, but did not make note of it. Or was it Recycle behavior,
> ???
> So start over at making shortcuts at roots and in excluded folders.
> This includes the subs of the excluded, right?
> Create Restore, delete shortcuts, and not empty Recycle. Reboot
> process ( refers to that I unhook external via tray tool and
> phsically, then reboot, and once I get to the first windows screen,
> it is safe for me to hook up USB external drive without drive letter
> mash.)
> Run restore with modified process. At shutdown point of reboot,
> disconnect USB drive, and plug back in at that first windows screen.
>
> I think I found all files restored and then check recycle where I
> found several hidden files via what I wrote above. Started writing
> this and at break it went blue screen.
>
> Reboot, auto scan disk. Trying to bring this back to previous point
> and that
>
> seems now. SAVE!
>
> W/O ext. C: recycle showed 8 files under properties but looked empty.
> Hooked up external and checked all partitions for shortcuts and
> recycle bins. Shown are no shortcuts and 2,2,8,4, &6 files under the
> bins properties. OK, what is this?
>
> Starting over with a cycle of system restore.
>
> That seems to be it. That is a cycling of system restore is necessary
> after editing filelist.xml or so it seems.
>
> That is that system restore did not put the shortcuts back into the
> excluded folders.
> And an undo of last restore removed shortcuts on the root of the
> drives. But the recycle bin is still an area of concern. Icon shows
> it has files, I did not empty it of shortcuts after deleting them.
> And I have the empty option, but opening it shows no files. And it
> says there are no files in it.
>
> The partitions where I made no shortcuts, if I choose properties of
> Recycle Bin on them, they show the 2 file situation that seems broken
> prior to modding filelist.xml.
> The other three partitions where shortcuts were created and then
> deleted each have 4 files listed under properties. But, there would
> have been 6 deleted shortcuts plus the two phantom ones before I
> started the modification.
>
> Can you help me with this problem?
>
> Thanks for all the help so far.
> Norman

Sorry for the long delay. The new protections seem to work very well.

Recycle Bin has been investigated for drives no longer present. It took me a
while to get around to hooking up old drives and all show same
characteristic by the method I mentioned. Two files remain and have to
wonder if they are some system function. I had found under W98 & SE there
are two such files, one of them name INFO if I remember correctly. Neither
file could be found by a search, but then WME was not included in the MS
article.

BTW, how do I reset recycle bin?

Norman
"Mike M" <No_Spam DeleteThis @Corned_Beef.Only> wrote in message
news:uw8B3$eVIHA.4684@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> > That seems to be it. That is a cycling of system restore is necessary
> > after editing filelist.xml or so it seems.
>
> This is essential as System Restore and SFP do not directly use
> FileList.xml but rather their control files in the C:\_RESTORE folder and
> these control files are (re)built from FileList.xml each time that SR is
> reset.
>
> Recycle bin. This is possibly/probably because it contains references to
> items that are in the bin on drives no longer present. Resetting the
> Recycle Bin should resolve this.
> --
> Mike Maltby
> mike.maltby DeleteThis @gmail.com
>
>
> Norman <nthums1 DeleteThis @comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > "Mike M" <No_Spam DeleteThis @Corned_Beef.Only> wrote in message
> > news:u%23%23A$6%23UIHA.536@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> >> Norman <nthums1 DeleteThis @comcast.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>> The size thing was a possible guess, such as maybe the writing of
> >>> the undo exceeded the size limit.
> >>> Current sizes are a little over 3GB for store and the current used
> >>> space on C for the restore folder is about 1.5 GB. The undo
> >>> operation appears to have dumped all previous data because I see
> >>> only one point created this morning. Because of this and a wild
> >>> guess of the amount of data moved I likely broke the 3 GB limit.
> >>
> >> I'm sorry to read that this caused you to loose data. The one global
> >> archive with all the associated file moving from other drives to the
> >> root archive is one of the major problems with Win Me's system
> >> restore. This being one of the reasons why I excluded all my top
> >> level folders other than C:\Windows and C:\Program Files from SR's
> >> embrace when running Win Me.
> > Appreciate the sorry but not crying over spilt milk. Some of it was
> > so long ago it long dried up, but now I at least understand some of
> > the behavior that occurred after rebuilding the system and hooking up
> > the external. That is you have to see the external drives before you
> > can change drive letters. Your idea of exclusion sounds good but
> > could get a little tricky if updates to exclusions are needed. No
> > restore to them if all does not go well, although there are few that
> > do not install to \Program Files.
> >
> >>
> >>> Also I am uncertain how the external drive might have effected the
> >>> outcome. I disconnect it during such operation and most of the time,
> >>> trying to avoid a problem with losing something from it. System
> >>> restore warns that it detects the drive is missing and wants to know
> >>> if it should continue, which I do. How does system restore handle
> >>> the missing drive?
> >>
> >> This depends. Ideally SR should ignore all external drives but this
> >> isn't always the case. Does the drive have a _RESTORE folder
> >> containing a single byte file srdiskid.dat? If yes then the drive
> >> is being monitored and SR globally will be reset if a different
> >> drive letter is allocated to the drive other than that stored in
> >> srdiskid.dat. If the drive is missing it shouldn't reset SR, What
> >> resets SR is if a drive is added that wasn't previously monitored
> >> (thinks - that statement might not be true, memory lapse)
> >
> > The external is being monitored.
> > No reset if drive is missing, that seems to be true if memory is
> > correct and verified by current full backup.
> > That backup, about a month old, was a copy of one drive to the other
> > using Seagate utiliy. But since I wanted to look at both drives,
> > comparing what took place, I left both hooked upon reboot. That
> > obviously wiped the system restore from the not primary partition.
> > Switched via BIOS. And I really need to physically switch connections
> > to make sure I'm OK with the now unhooked drive. I left both hooked
> > up for a few days and had some weirdness with restore, but don't
> > remember exact details. But do remember I did not get the expected
> > copy of the partition holding data to both drives and manually did
> > copy from external drive. I may have even checked to see if system
> > restore was working and again broke the limit.
> >
> >
> > or if a drive is enumerated to a different drive letter than before
> >> as determined by the system comparing the current enumerated drive
> >> letter and the contents of the file srdiskid.dat on each drive (that
> >> _is_ true).
> >
> > So when I unhooked the second drive it dumped the restore upon
> > reboot. That sounds right by memory. I did not take careful notes of
> > action and reaction.
> >
> >>
> >>> How do you manually exclude? Does that work for all subs of that top
> >>> level folder or are you restricted to one level?
> >>
> >> Everything below the folder specified is included or excluded as
> >> appropriate.
> >>
> >>> I found this somewhat informative but not sure of accuracy.
> >>> http://users.iafrica.com/c/cq/cquirke/sr-sfp.htm
> >>
> >> That's Chris Quirke's site and is very much based on discussions I
> >> had with him six or seven years ago.
> > A feather in your hat.
> >
> >>
> >>> I followed the wininit.ini link and scrolled up to scandisk.ini.
> >>> Reading that seems to confirm some of my concerns about scandisk,
> >>> which is a different issue.
> >>
> >> This has nothing to do with system restore. Are you thinking here
> >> about the ability to set scandisk to create more than five back-up
> >> copies of the registry?
> > No, but thinking about exactly what he said of possible dire
> > circumstances related to auto scandisk at startup. Leaving no trace
> > of damaged file which you might possibly determine what the file
> > originally was.
> > And that brings up another possible twist. With so much under the no
> > touch umbrella of system restore, less chance of rolling back to a
> > good file.
> > And if you get the crash, reboot, scandisk condition, it seems it
> > might be prudent to run a restore followed by a scandisk where you
> > have complete control over action and logging?
> >
> > These are stored as rb*.cab files in the folder
> >> C:\Windows\Sysbckup and have nothing to do with system restore which
> >> makes and stores its own copy of the registry together with
> >> wininit.ini and system.ini each time it creates a checkpoint.
> >>
> >>> I'm guessing that the section of FileList.xml that gets edited is
> >>> - <DIRECTORIES>
> >>> - <Exclude>
> >>
> >> Correct
> >>
> >>> But uncertain of the syntax to exclude drive top level folders.
> >>
> >> [drive]:\[folder]
> >> have another look at FileList.xml for an example of a folder entry
> >> such as those for TMP and TEMP folders. Note you can explicitly
> >> specify the drive or use the wildcard * such as is used to exclude
> >> all top level TMP folders regardless of the drive on which they are
> >> located. What you cannot however do is exclude a drive by adding an
> >> entry such as [drive]:\ I made life easy for myself by having a top
> >> level folder named DATA on each drive and excluding *:\Data from
> >> SR's embrace
> >>
> > Thanks. I had for awhile moved the My Documents to the archive
> > partition which worked well, at least for awhile. But that got messy
> > with hooking and unhooking drives. Gee, I wonder why, now a little
> > better educated. Seems it might be best to manually move data,
> > leaving folder structure on C:, just in case I need to fall back to
> > default. At least one program I have expects that to be the store (My
> > Documents), but can be redirected.
> >
> >> Note the need to remove the FileList.xml entry in FileList.xml. I
> >> haven't read Chris's page for some time but if he mentions sfpdb.sfp
> >> there is no need to alter or touch this file in any way. This file
> >> is used to index the catalogue versioning and hash information from
> >> the catalogues used by SFP for many SFP protected files and should
> >> not be altered or removed otherwise SFP will not protect the files
> >> in the way it should. All that is ever necessary is to add or
> >> remove entries in FileList.xml. Further it is not possible to
> >> configure SFP to fully protect additional files from modification
> >> although it is trivial to add or remove a file, folder or file type
> >> from SR's embrace.
> >>
> >> So in summary, edit FileList.xml to remove the entry to itself and
> >> name say FileList.new. [Disable SR - I honestly cannot remember if
> >> this step is necessary at this point] Boot to DOS using a floppy.
> >> Rename FileList.xml to say FileList.old and FileList.new to
> >> FileList.xml. Remove floppy and reboot [and re-enable SR if
> >> disabled]. You can now edit FileList.xml and save it without SFP
> >> kicking in and restoring the old copy. Once you have made the
> >> required changes reset SR to rebuild the control files which will
> >> then incorporate the changes you made to FileList.xml.
> >
> > Oh boy. system crashed with VXD error and lost writing. Gee can I
> > remember all that written.
> >
> > I was writing that I may have found a way around boot disk. Emptied
> > Recycle. Unfortunately I discovered that going to the icon in each
> > partition shows 2 files under properties.
> > That seems to be a problem?
> > Copied filelist.xml to My Documents, named old, opened in wordpad and
> > cut th e line for it, pasting in exclude section, saved as xml.
> > Cycled system Restore. One new restore point. Rebooted to safe and
> > copied file to system\restore. Checked file in SFP and it had
> > automatically copied to that location. Boot normal and all looked OK,
> > with external drive. Created another restore and then booted to safe
> > with external drive.
> >
> > Windows assigned lettering as if two internal drives and that killed
> > restore points.
> > If booted to safe and then hook up drive, it is not detected. So back
> > to windows.
> >
> > W/ Ext, edited filelist to exclude "*:\SAFE 1232" and a couple of
> > other top level folders. Copied to restore and verified, reboot
> > process to be sure. Created shortcuts at root of E: internal and V& W
> > roots, external. And in folders changed in filelist. Create restore
> > point. Delete shortcuts created. Reboot not adding external. Ran
> > restore, expecting it to complain that external partitions were
> > missing, but it did not.. Then hooked up external. Of course nothing
> > changed on external, but it restored all to E:
> > Double check filelist.xml. Emptied Recycle. Unhooked external and ran
> > undo restore. And something happened with resore points that did not
> > seem normal, but did not make note of it. Or was it Recycle behavior,
> > ???
> > So start over at making shortcuts at roots and in excluded folders.
> > This includes the subs of the excluded, right?
> > Create Restore, delete shortcuts, and not empty Recycle. Reboot
> > process ( refers to that I unhook external via tray tool and
> > phsically, then reboot, and once I get to the first windows screen,
> > it is safe for me to hook up USB external drive without drive letter
> > mash.)
> > Run restore with modified process. At shutdown point of reboot,
> > disconnect USB drive, and plug back in at that first windows screen.
> >
> > I think I found all files restored and then check recycle where I
> > found several hidden files via what I wrote above. Started writing
> > this and at break it went blue screen.
> >
> > Reboot, auto scan disk. Trying to bring this back to previous point
> > and that
> >
> > seems now. SAVE!
> >
> > W/O ext. C: recycle showed 8 files under properties but looked empty.
> > Hooked up external and checked all partitions for shortcuts and
> > recycle bins. Shown are no shortcuts and 2,2,8,4, &6 files under the
> > bins properties. OK, what is this?
> >
> > Starting over with a cycle of system restore.
> >
> > That seems to be it. That is a cycling of system restore is necessary
> > after editing filelist.xml or so it seems.
> >
> > That is that system restore did not put the shortcuts back into the
> > excluded folders.
> > And an undo of last restore removed shortcuts on the root of the
> > drives. But the recycle bin is still an area of concern. Icon shows
> > it has files, I did not empty it of shortcuts after deleting them.
> > And I have the empty option, but opening it shows no files. And it
> > says there are no files in it.
> >
> > The partitions where I made no shortcuts, if I choose properties of
> > Recycle Bin on them, they show the 2 file situation that seems broken
> > prior to modding filelist.xml.
> > The other three partitions where shortcuts were created and then
> > deleted each have 4 files listed under properties. But, there would
> > have been 6 deleted shortcuts plus the two phantom ones before I
> > started the modification.
> >
> > Can you help me with this problem?
> >
> > Thanks for all the help so far.
> > Norman
>

An empty Recycle Bin should contain two"hidden" files named INFO2 and
desktop.ini. Note that a rebuilt Recycle Bin will possibly only contain
the file INFO2 until a file is deleted after which desktop.ini should also
be present.

> BTW, how do I reset recycle bin?

By this I meant rebuild but it would appear this is probably not required.
How to do? By deleting all files in the folder RECYCLED from a DOS prompt
and then rebooting which should create a new INFO2 file. See KB 136517
"How the Recycle Bin Stores Files"
(http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=136517) which although not explicitly
mentioning Win Me still applies.
--
Mike Maltby
mike.maltby DeleteThis @gmail.com


Norman <nthums1 DeleteThis @comcast.net> wrote:

> Sorry for the long delay. The new protections seem to work very well.
>
> Recycle Bin has been investigated for drives no longer present. It
> took me a while to get around to hooking up old drives and all show
> same characteristic by the method I mentioned. Two files remain and
> have to wonder if they are some system function. I had found under
> W98 & SE there are two such files, one of them name INFO if I
> remember correctly. Neither file could be found by a search, but then
> WME was not included in the MS article.
>
> BTW, how do I reset recycle bin?