Every now I get power failures. If the system isn’t off at the time it chokes. On the next boot it gives me the “Safe mode” option, which I decline. It still for some reason assumes that I must have installed some faulty software and reverts me to a prior state. I can never tell what that state will be, but all my settings will suddenly be at their old values. Window sizes are wrong and default Word settings are old, etc.
Naturally, I’d like to prevent this. Is there a way?
Corrolary question that arises: When do they decide to take these backup setting states? Can I force one to be taken, to say “I’m happy right now, so please save this current state and forget all prior states”?
Change everything to what you want and then shut down and power off. The system save the lastest good configuration at shut down. The last good shut down is what the system reverts to when a start up fails.
Not all operating systems use that strategy. If I yank the A/C cord on my Mac and then reinsert it and boot, the OS runs “fsck”, a disk-checking routine, and unless it runs headlong into problems that make the disk unbootable and which fsck can’t fix, proceeds to boot normally. No settings get reset, no services get suspended.
The tradeoff is that if you do get settings and preferences messed up by an inelegant OS face-plant, you have to recognize what’s not working and toss the hosed prefs files yourself.
Actually, OSX settings and prefs themselves aren’t very prone to corruption (because they are usually plain-text files containing XML, a very robust format) but we *do *get permissions FUBARed often enough to need to know how to fix 'em. (Running Disk Utility’s built-in permissions-fixer generally does the trick).
Hmm, I don’t know why it would be doing that, but you can turn off system restore if you would like. Its right click my computer—properties----system restore tab. There you have the option of turning it off on all drives, or which every drive you would like, if for example C is your system drive and D your data drive. To see what dates your system is creating a restore point go to start–programs–accessories—system tools—system restore. It basically makes a point every day, 2 at most, as well as when you make any system changes such as program removal.
To prevent your system from crashing you may want to get a UPS. Not sure off hand what they cost, but small ones shouldn’t be to bad. I am assuming that you have a surge protector in between your system and the power source?
That did it, actually solved both my problems, with a slight modification.
As soon as I turned off the restore option it advised me that all prior restore points were erased. Then when I turned it back on, my current state became the one of record.
Now if I just do this every time I make a mess of changes (usually when I do something like switch monitors), then it will never remember anything too far back.
Thanks!