What can system restore do?

[darsunt]

I am planning to delete an old microsoft office suite and install a new one. I was planning to use system restore as insurance in case the new installation does not work.

Can system restore do this? Restore the old installation of office if the new one does not work? It seems like an awful lot for a utility program to do.

[eyeCpc]

The system restore feature brings the entire system registry back to a previous points as well as files and folders for programs installed. The idea is to restore the system if something goes wrong during a software installation or you have an oops! and end up deleting the wrong thing.

For MS office products the installer may uninstaller or overwrite the older version for the new. Or you may have to see it removed completely prior to installing the newer version. A restore point prior to all that should see the older version restored if things go normally.

[Mak213]

While i agree with eye. There is a catch. Some installers create their own restore point. Which means that they could make sure that your new program is included in the restore. It could also mean that it restores to a point previously.

I have installed several version of Office at the same time. It should go without a hitch. But it should work so that your restore point takes you back to before the new one was installed. Not as far back to when the old one was installed though.

[eyeCpc]

On the few occasions I have actually used the restore feature one change on the system following the creation of several points would simply make them useless. That was seen recently when reconfiguring designated drive letters when adding on an external drive.

Most of the time even when seeing an installer create a new point it will bring you back to the configuration seen when you first started. That depends mainly on seeing the same enviroment as when the point was created to avoid seeing that nulled out.