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General discussion

Missing icons, all programs, bookmarks....

Aug 4, 2010 2:05PM PDT

I'm running windows vista home premium. I just recently updated firefox to a newer version then noticed that some firefox extensions did not work with the new version. So i figured i'd uninstall these extensions that didn't work. The first one i uninstalled, HP smart web printing, ended up taking things with it. So now i'm missing everything in my "all programs" in the start menu, some desktop icons, all my bookmarks and who knows what else.

I've attempted restoring to a previous restore point, some restorations have failed and some made no changes at all.

Any help at all is welcome.

Discussion is locked

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Let's discuss System Restore a little.
Aug 7, 2010 3:49AM PDT

System Restore is not applicable to "our files, programs and bookmarks." Microsoft writes this about System Restore or SR for short -> "System Restore helps you restore your computer's system files to an earlier point in time. It's a way to undo system changes to your computer without affecting your personal files, such as e‑mail, documents, or photos."
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/What-is-System-Restore

Microsoft has now told us that SR does not restore the very items you want back. And it's designed to not touch or backup such things.

To recover what you had would be with your own backup system but not SR.

-> Let's say you didn't backup. To get items back you can create new shortcuts where you want them and for the Firefox book marks you should research where Firefox stores that and back that up before you install Firefox again.

Hope this clears this up a little.
Bob

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recovery drive
Aug 7, 2010 6:06AM PDT

i ended up just using the recovery drive to restore the system to the original factory settings. I lost some files that weren't backed up but everything is back to normal now. i definately learned my lesson on backing up, which was only due to lazyness versus ignorance, okay a little ignorance.

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Ouch.
Aug 7, 2010 11:56PM PDT

I didn't think it was that far gone. Making shortcuts is usually trivial compared to starting over but you know more than I do about how bad off the machine was.

Hope my SR explainer helped to show what SR does and does not do.
Bob

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fear of the unknown
Aug 12, 2010 12:30AM PDT

I tried your advise for recreating shortcuts, but EVERYTHING was gone from my all programs list and i couldn't remember what to add and what not to add. Also i was thinking about anything else to the system i had done and just had not discovered yet. The files i lost are easily replaceable so i figured why not just have a fresh OS install. All this because of the junkware hp and others include with an OS.