xp professional system restore not working

What does "not working" mean?

Why do you think there are registry errors?

What is your system make and model?

What is your XP Version and Service Pack?

Describe your current antivirus and anti malware situation:  Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), McAfee, Symantec, Norton, Spybot, AVG, Avira!,  Panda, Trend Micro, CA, Defender, ZoneAlarm, PC Tools, Comodo, etc.

What is the issue you are having that you think System Restore will remedy (or are you just practicing)?  Remember that System Restore is not a time machine.

Have you ever used System Restore to successfully restore your system in the past?

Describe exactly what happens when you attempt to perform a System Restore and any error messages you see that indicates it is not working (something besides "it doesn't work").

Some Anti Virus tools will "protect" your system so much that they will not allow a System Restore to work properly.  

For example, if you are running any Norton/Symantec products, you may see a message like this:

Restoration Incomplete. Your computer cannot be restored...

It is such a popular Symantec problem (well, I'll be polite and call it an "undocumented feature"...), they wrote an article about it:

https://support.norton.com/sp/en/us/home/current/solutions/v51118464_EndUserProfile_en_us?product=home&version=1

Depending on what you are using for malware protection, you may have to disable the product(s) temporarily, do the System Restore and then turn the products back on again when the System Restore is complete.

Sometimes you will need to boot your system in Safe Mode and while your protection programs are not running, then do the System Restore.  Microsoft hints in some of their articles that if System Restore fails to restore your computer, boot into Safe Mode and then execute the System Restore.  That works for some configurations.

Note that if you perform a System Restore in Safe Mode, you will not be able to undo it and there will be no option on the System Restore screen to "Undo my last restoration" like you would have if you were to restore your system from a normal boot.

Give those ideas some consideration if they apply to you.  

Sometimes malicious software will afflict your System Restore to prevent you from finding and removing the malicious software.  It would much rather fool you into thinking that you have to repair or reinstall your XP when that is not necessary.

No matter what you are using for malware protection, I would do this and only then begin to troubleshoot any remaining issues:

Download, install, update and do at least one full scan with these free malware detection programs then resolve any remaining issues:

Malwarebytes (MBAM):  http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free

SUPERAntiSpyware: (SAS):  http://www.superantispyware.com/

These can be uninstalled later if desired.

When the scans run clean, reboot, test and we can fix any other issues.

Sometimes System Restore is just so afflicted or the Restore Points are suspicious, the best option is to just reinstall your System Restore.  Doing so will delete any old Restore Points, but sometimes this is the only way to fix a broken System Restore.  You don't have to reinstall XP, just the System Restore part.

That may leave you with your original unspecified problem that you hope System Restore will correct (using a System Restore is usually not equivalent to fixing the problem though).

Hi Ros,      

Thank you for the post.    

After going through the post; it seems that, you need assistance to perform System Restore. Please answer the followings, which will help us to assist in right direction.  

1.      Do you get any error message while performing the System Restore?

2.      Why are you running the System Restore?

3.      Which antivirus application are you using?

4.      Did you make any changes to the computer prior to this issue?    

In-order to fix the System Restore, go through the following methods.

Method 1:

Perform the System Restore in safe and check the issue status.

A description of the Safe Mode Boot options in Windows XP.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315222

How to restore Windows XP to a previous state.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306084

Method 2:

Perform the System Restore by keeping the computer in clean boot status, refer to the following link. How to configure Windows XP to start in a "clean boot" state.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353

Note:**** After you used the clean boot to resolve your problem, you can follow these steps to configure Windows XP to start normally.

Hope this helps.

Those looks like parts of the AVG Antivirus Security system - parts of which are malfunctioning, installed incorrectly, partially uninstalled or otherwise afflicted.

I don't care much for AVG since it has a high overhead in terms of CPU and memory usage but you need to have some kind of AV protection running on your system.

Why don't you download and run the AVG uninstaller utility (probably the 32 bit version) from here and see if it will cleanup after itself:

http://www.avg.com/us-en/utilities

Then when you are done, reboot and see how things look.

I would then immediately download and install Microsoft Security Essentials since it has a smaller footprint.  You can get that here:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security-essentials-download

It is risky to get on the Internet without some kinds of AV program so you should do that first before doing too much surfing, then you can look back at AVG and decide if that is something you want to use or not.

I think MSE and a scan from MBAM ad SAS once in a while are adequate protection for most people that don't surf to close too the metal.

Note that the full scans from MBAM and SAS can take a long time...  You can switch to the quick scans in the future and save the full scans for when you have more time or are suspicious that your system might be infected.

If you get more error messages, be sure to include the exact error message as you see it without paraphrasing to get the best ideas.