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June 04, 2009, 12:36 AM
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#1 (permalink) |
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Windows System Restore wastes hours of my life
A few months ago I rebuilt most of my computer, pretty much just keeping the drives and sound card. Most of my free time has been spent on wow until the other day when I decided to work on some old music (I'm a composer) in a MIDI notation program. This was apparently the first time I've tried to do anything in MIDI since the hardware changes, and I realized I'd never updated the sound card drivers over the CD installation, so I went to Creative Labs' site to do that. After updating drivers not only did I lose the ability to load soundfonts, but also lost sound to everything EXCEPT midi. Rolling back the drivers was not an option unfortunately, and I couldn't find any fix with Creative Labs downloads, so I decided to use the Windows System Restore. My sound is back to how it was a couple days ago, with poor midi performance due to old drivers, but I have sound everywhere else. The bad news was that the restore conflicted with the 3.1.3 WoW patch and according to multiple blue posts on the official forums the only way to fix this is by completely reinstalling all of WoW. The CDs (Classic, The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King) took me just over an hour, which I thought wasn't too bad. However, the LK patches have been going for nearly 2 1/2 hours now and I'm in the middle of 3.1 still. This is on DSL. Just a bit of advice for anyone who is considering using the System Restore function in the future. You may very well be stuck spending your entire evening re-installing all of WoW. I was supposed to be in Ulduar right now :( |
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June 04, 2009, 03:29 AM
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#2 (permalink) |
Character Info
Lavath 80 Blood Elf Warlock Shadow Council US RP Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 3/13/55 |
Re: Windows System Restore wastes hours of my life
I pretty much turn that off as soon as I can. If you are unfortunate enough to have a virus on your system, System Restore could potentially save that in the restore point as well. Sorry you had such a headache there. |
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June 04, 2009, 03:47 AM
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#3 (permalink) | |
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Re: Windows System Restore wastes hours of my life
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June 04, 2009, 04:07 AM
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#4 (permalink) |
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Re: Windows System Restore wastes hours of my life
I'm currently in the middle of a reinstall myself. Not by any bug, but because I am testing the Windows 7 RC (and getting Vista off of this machine). The patching process takes forever, but so far I am happy with W7 performance especially in the Tablet functions. |
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June 04, 2009, 04:44 AM
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#5 (permalink) |
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Re: Windows System Restore wastes hours of my life
SDraconis has it correct, if you pop in your LK dvd it will install WoW to 3.0. 2 things, that strikes me odd and I wondered why you never did it... assuming your WoW directory was intact ( i don't see a reason why system restore would delete your WoW folder), you can just click on the WoW exe to run the game... sure it's not found in your start menu or part of your Windows registry but the game does run. secondly, it sounds like you're redownloading <every patch>. What happened to your orginals? am I the only that keeps the WoW patches backed up on an external HDD :O |
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June 04, 2009, 10:46 AM
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#6 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Kiralyn 80 Human Warlock Mal'Ganis US PvP Guild: Self Titled Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 0.13.58 |
Re: Windows System Restore wastes hours of my life
Actually you can go beyond jsut backing up patches. It seems to be a little known fact, but you don't actually need to install wow! If you back up the entire wow directory (usually c:/program files/world of warcraft), you can just drop that directory back onto a fresh OS install and play from the executable. I know for a fact that this works on both XP Pro and Windows 7 RC1. It's a whole lot faster than installing from scratch. If you are doing this, keep in mind that most external drives, be they HDD or flash, struggle with smaller files. You can speed up the backup/restore process by cleaning out your screenshots and interface folders, and deleting any patch files that are in the directory. I've taken to backing up the whole thing weekly just in case something goes boom, as tends to happen.
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Hell, it's about time. -Tychus Findlaw |
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June 04, 2009, 10:57 AM
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#7 (permalink) | |
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Character Info
Gimp 80 Undead Warlock Stormrage Euro PvE |
Re: Windows System Restore wastes hours of my life
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June 04, 2009, 10:58 AM
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#8 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Zamp 80 Blood Elf Warlock Stormreaver US PvP Guild: Elusive Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 3/13/55 |
Re: Windows System Restore wastes hours of my life
I keep a mirror harddrive on a external harddrive just for issues like this. System backup of System File, and Wow Files every night :P Maybe I'm too paranoid. Thank god wow is very portable. |
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June 04, 2009, 01:26 PM
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#9 (permalink) | |
Character Info
sassyevil 80 Undead Warlock Garona US PvE Guild: The Sesame Street Gang Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 02/14/55 |
Re: Windows System Restore wastes hours of my life
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June 04, 2009, 06:31 PM
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#10 (permalink) | |
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Character Info
Majestrix 80 Human Warlock Kargath US PvE Guild: Keepers of the Old Ways Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 1/55/15 |
Re: Windows System Restore wastes hours of my life
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This also means not only do you not have to repatch but you don't have to redownload mods and/or setup your UI and defaults all over again.
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Maj |
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