) But it??™s never made clear what exactly
changes when you restore a restore point, making this a potentially dangerous
tool. The good news is that you can return to the System Restore
wizard and undo your last change should something go wrong (assuming
you can boot Windows thereafter).
Dealing with Drivers and Other Tales of Hardware Troubleshooting | 323
Troubleshooting
If all you??™re trying to do is uninstall software, you should do
so through the Programs and Features page in Control Panel.
Likewise, to uninstall a hardware driver, open Device Manager
(devmgmt.msc), right-click the device, and select Uninstall.
With these features, at least the scope of your change
will be easily predictable.
Last Known Good Configuration
If a recent driver or software installation has prevented Windows from
loading, press F8 just after your PC powers up (see ???What to Do When
Windows Won??™t Start,??? earlier in this chapter), and from the Advanced
Boot Options menu that appears, select Last Known Good Configuration
(advanced).
If you??™re lucky, the effect is more or less the same as choosing a recent
restore point in the System Restore wizard, allowing you to subsequently
start Windows. But in practice, this feature often has no effect, either
because the scope of the change isn??™t great enough to fix whatever problem
you??™re having, or because Vista wasn??™t set up to create restore
points in the first place (more on that shortly).
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