Windows system restore not working in xp

Hi, system restore in XP on an old desktop no longer works,
giving an error that it has encountered a problem. I have put in the XP
CD and tried scannow which shows the progress bar,
which when finished vanishes from the screen.
I need to recover the files from the cd but am
unsure which option to use, I do not want to start a new instal.

 

Did it ever work? I thought System restore on anything older than Vista was just there for show and didn't actually do anything.

When you say you need to recover the files from the cd, what does that mean?
What's the issue with the computer?


If it's not booting and you need to get data off the hard drive, it would probably be easier to put the hdd into another computer and access it that way.

 

It never really worked. At least in all the life span of XP, I never got it to work. It either failed, or Windows ended up broken, and the whole thing too more time than to just re-install the OS and all my software.

I know Microsoft scraped it and restarted from scratch for Vista, and that works. (and of course Windows 7 and 8 does as well)

 

I beg to differ, I have never had an issue with System restore in XP. Infact the repair options for XP are better than vista/7/8.

 

It has worked perfectly on various machines for as long as I have used XP. I have not said that it is not booting just that the restore no longer works. I thought that re-installing some of the windows files from the cd may have fixed it but no. I have run AV and malware software to no avail. I don't wish to go for a clean install but will do if I have to.

There lays another issue, whilst it can see the cd in a Windows environment I cannot boot from the disk and I do have the drive set as my first option in bios.