System restore and safe mode not operating

XP Home Edition SP3

Control panel>System>System Restore

I am unable to check or uncheck the box "Turn off System Restore" (Group Policy)
I have Drive C and Drive D. It is monitoring both, but when I highlight D, and click the Advanced button, I cannot turn off Drive D, either.

I decided to try doing it in Safe Mode, but I hold down F8 on reboot, and all I get is options for which Drive to use for start up.

I thought I might have a Trojan, virus, or other noxious beast, but I can't find anything by using my antiviral scan (NOD32), Malwarebytes, SuperAntiSpyware, or Windows AntiVirus Mate.

Therefore I think I must have done something stupid (Hope that doesn't surprise anybody, it doesn't surprise me).

Does anybody have any ideas?

Oh yes, and I am looking for a manager for my JAVA. I used to have one that would clean up my old JAVA Updates when installing the new updates.

Thanks!

Dial-a-fix has a Reinstall System Restore option in it's Tools section. No installation needed.

Download the zip file, unzip it, open the Dial-a-fix-v0.60.0.24 folder and run Dial-a-fix.exe.
Click on the Tools button at the bottom, looks like a hammer.
Select Reinstall System Restore then click GO.

When it completes, reboot and see what happens.

I did it, but same situation. Can't disable either all or one of my hard drives. I want to disable restore on my second and external hard drives, but the system restore is doing the same, unable to disable restore either as a group policy or as second or external hard drives. Nifty little tool, though.

Just a quick note, I see on this forum that Microsoft issued a faulty update #KB977165. I went to Windows update, and looked at my "Review my Update History", and I see that I did indeed download and install KB977165 on the 9th of February, and nothing since. Can that be the reason I am having this problem, and have they yet issued a patch for their error, or are we just supposed to live with it?

XP will delete Windows 7 system restore points. Do you want to turn off both OS's system restore feature?

From everything I've read, KB977165 only causes problems when the system has some kind of malware infection. At least that is what MS is claiming. It caused is a BSOD on next boot and not being able boot back into Windows, especially on computers without D or DVD drives (netbooks, some Minis) was very hard on some folks. The easiest way to find out though is to use Add/Remove Programs, check the Show updates box and uninstall it. See if that changes anything. Jacee, what do you mean by XP can delete Windows 7 System Restore points? Watcherduck has a XP SP3 system according to his first post.

I was looking under the avatar and thought he might be dual booting?

Operating System: Dual Boot
Windows XP 32 bit
Windows 7 64 bit


….. I'll get my hat