System Restore Points

Howdy; I have a Dell Dimeynsion 4500 with 512 mb of ram and a single hard drive. It is older but working fine. No evidence of spyware or virus's. I run Spyweeper and Avast. Recently I happened to check System Restore and noticed that there were no Restore Points established, even though System Restore is turned on and the maximum is established for disk usage for the drive and the "G:" partition that was created by Dell for whatever reason. I created a manual restore point and exited. Today when I checked, the manual restore point was gone and no other points created. The machine is not used everyday, but was used yesterday by my wife. Why is Windows not creating the restore points? Am I going to have to go in periodically and create my own? I have never had to use System Restore, but would like to have it there if needed. Thanks - Mark

Here's a great resource for understanding System Restore and fixing a variety of errors in System Restore.
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_restore.htm

Side Note: Are you using the G:\ partition to store System Restore?
I wouln't recommend use of the Dell pre-load system back-up partition (G:\) for anything at all.
Leave it untouched.

Please note that some of the suggestions from the linked "kellys-korner" help site, involve Registry Changes.
The recommended Registry work is "safe", but it is always a good idea to export and save a back-up copy of your Registry before making changes.

Please let us know how you are progressing.
After you have System Restore "up and running", there are other considerations that you may want to address, such as:
How many Restore Points should I have?
How much Disk Space should I allocate for System Restore?

Best Regards

dough; Looks like good information. I'll check it out and get back. I am not doing anything with the G: drive. Thanks - Mark