Windows XP has a feature called System Restore that takes a snapshot of your entire system's settings every time you start your computer. You should manually create a restore point before making significant changes to your system. On today's "Call for Help" Leo will teach you how.

Making a restore point doesn't take a lot of time and it'll give you peace of mind. If something goes wrong with your machine after a botched installation, you have a way out instead of having to call for help or format your hard drive and start over.

System Restore doesn't affect personal files like Word documents, browser favorites, or pictures. So, you won't be losing anything of value should you find yourself having to choose a point in time to restore.

Create a restore point

To manually set system restore points, follow these directions.

1. Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, then System Tools.
2. Click System Restore to launch the System Restore wizard.
3. Select the box next the text labeled "Create a restore point" and click the Next button.
4. Type a description for your new restore point. Something like "Before I installed some program that may cause my system major grief" would do just fine, but you don't have to be that descriptive.
5. Click Create.

OK, so the $20 million question is, how do you restore a point if something bad happens? I'm glad you asked, because you can do this one of two ways.

Access restore points

When you need to access a restore point, boot into safe mode by pressing F8 during the boot. Then select "Last known good configuration (your most recent settings that worked)" and press Enter.

If you want to pick your restore point by creation date, boot into safe mode and launch the System Restore wizard. Now you can restore your computer based on when restore points were created.