I won a copy of Rollback RX in a competition some time back – I had two copies and initially installed it on two machines, one been a desktop and the other a Laptop. I have since come up against a few issues with this software that at this time have made me remove it and revert back to the normal System restore that comes with windows.
First Issue
The first issue was that by default, it stored the initial image and without any further user intervention, it would not store any-more and also it switched of system restore so your left with a system that could lose a lot of work. You can go in and change the settings so that upon the first boot of the day, it does a snapshot and the way it does this is one big snapshot and then whatever has changed since the last one. This means if you downloaded a large file (say a DVD ISO) and left it on the HD for a day or so then deleted it – the image will be much bigger due to it keeping this file just in case you needed it back. The fact it has to image the drive each boot (first of day), it slows down the start-up of the computer and if it feels the need to defragment the images (an option you can switch off) – this is even longer to start the computer.
Serial Problems
It is not un-common for me to format my drive and do a total operating system install for a fresh start and this is where I hit the next problem. It told me that the Serial had already been used the max number of times even though this was the same machine, the same operating system and so forth. What I had to do was contact support and either let them reset the number of times it had been used or in another case, get a whole new number. I can see this been all too easy to forget which serial is valid any longer.
Eating Space
The final nail in the coffin came about when I noticed the Hard drive on the laptop (160 GIG) was full, it had like 1GIG Free (roughly) and I started to waste time getting programs to locate the missing space, running disk cleaners and so on but nothing was telling me were this space had gone. It crossed my mind Rollback RX was eating the space, I went through the program and deleted all of the images apart from the very 1st one and the last two. I rebooted the computer (thinking it was some weird windows fault not showing the drive space properly) and was left with a DOS prompt after Rollback RX had completed it load – Windows 7 was now dead it seemed.
Removal
I started the computer and pressed the HOME Key when Rollback RX came up to select restore and choose the image from first boot that morning – this got me back to Windows working – but still a drive that was full minus any of the program or space I had already cleared out. At this point I had enough, I uninstalled RollBack RX, it rebooted and presented the Rollback RX Loading screen and informed me it was been uninstalled. It sat at 0% for at least one hour – I closed the screen down and left it running overnight as it was late.
Wndows 7 Loader died
In the morning I was met with the same broken DOS Screen (loader) and now I had to set about trying to fix this. I was to be honest going to leave it till later and re-install Windows 7 but I thought I would try a couple of things first.
Fixing the Boot loader
I booted from the Windows 7 DVD and selected fix problems – this claimed there in fact was no problem so I tried another trick, same DVD and typed in BOOTSECT.EXE /FIBMBR & /FIXBOOT (just in case). A quick reboot and this fixed the issue – we had Windows 7 back up and running and now only 30 GIG was been used – so in effect RollBack RX had consumed in the order of well over 100GIGs with no clear way to see where it was used.
Conclusion
Even though the theory of this software is better than System Restore in that it started before even booting the Operating system which means if you are stuck in a Blue Screen of Death you can go back to a point where the software worked. Even though I do have the full version, I think I am better off not using it..
