At long last. After working a while with Windows Vista, it finally crashed on me! Yes. I do seem like I’m ecstatic about the matter and, indeed, I am. I’m still a bit pissed off since fixing the darned thing took around ten minutes of my productive time. But at least I now belong to the large club of people screwed over by Windows Vista.

What happened? A friend of mine tried to send me a file from her Mac through Adium. I was using Windows Vista Home Basic and tried to receive the file via Yahoo! Messenger. And then it happened. The Y!M windows suddenly froze and giving it the three-finger salute didn’t do a damn thing. It just froze.

So I was forced to just override Windows and shut the laptop’s power off. Pressing it on again gave me the usual options for Safe Mode since I didn’t shut down “properly.” (I wonder what’s “proper” in such a case.) But the log-on screen never showed up even in Safe Mode. Not to be frustrated easily by Window’s typical crappy OS, I just got my Vista installer and used it to boot up a diagnostic/repair mode. The first thing it did was to ask me if I’d like to revert back to a restore point. I did. After the restart, Vista was working properly again.

Anyway, I basically hate restore points because they hog too much space. And Windows hides this from you so whatever kind of math wouldn’t reveal your accurate disk usage. But it does work from time to time. But this time it saved me from the clutches of the good ol’ solution – reformatting.

System Restore is a feature found both in XP and Vista and can easily be accessed via the Start Menu -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools. You can create a new restore point and I suggest you do so periodically (though the system does this for you by default). Just be sure to capture a system that’s absolutely functional so that you have a clean and functional restore point to use just in case something weird happens to your system.