In reply to emily.

Hi Emily! Well, even though I don't have a lot of people using my machines, I do have "safety net" software. Perhaps the following may be helpful.

I have an old program called GoBack on my machine that has saved me many times. I does make the machine a tad slower, but it remembers every keystroke. So if I download a program and something goes wrong, I can literally "go back" to a point in the last day or so (depending on how much work I have been doing) before things started going wrong. It works in DOS, so you don't even have to be able to access Windows to make it work, and it not only remembers your programs, but your documents as well. Far superior to the Windows Restore utility. The only times it has not worked for me is when there was a hardware problem. It was part of Norton System Works, but when I bought it I had to buy an older version to get GoBack included.

My brother David has just tried a similar program called Rollback Rx. He says:

Rollback Rx, like GoBack, is a safety net software designed to aid in recovery from viruses and computer crashes of varying severity, even those that prevent rebooting. Somewhat technical reviews are online so I will simply mention a few salient points regarding my excellent and recent experience with Rollback Rx.

My personal desktop and laptop are configured with the XP operating system and GoBack. The combination has worked flawlessly in my case for several years except for a single instance where I needed to reformat and start over. Except for that one time GoBack saved me such frustration probably once or twice each year, taking a mere few minutes each time to totally recover making me quite glad to have spent the money.

My work laptop is also configured with XP but not GoBack or any other aftermarket restore software. I recently needed to install minor updates on an $8,000+maintenance engineering software program. Anticipating that it could go wrong I attempted to find and install a copy of GoBack before proceeding. Uneasy with what appeared to be little current availability and support for GoBack, I installed Rollback Rx with a 15 day free trial before proceeding.

My intuition proved correct. The minor updates for my engineering software crashed my engineering software to the point of inoperability (no billable hours with inoperable software!) for at least 5 attempts! Rollback Rx restored me to operability in each instance in approximately as many minutes as it would take to reboot twice. Painless restore! I resigned myself to completing the engineering project with non-updated software while waiting for tech support to send me a new DVD with updates already integrated. The new disk installed perfectly.

Rollback is quick to install, quick to use, and has a quite small footprint on the hard drive. I have Rollback set up to take a snapshot of my computer (files, configuration, and software - apparently everything on the hard drive) each time I boot which is once each morning. The initial snapshot which should be taken immediately after installation requires several minutes. All subsequent snapshots are merely difference shots from the initial one onward and require just seconds: One can also take a snapshot at any time; say just before installing a new piece of software. Seconds. Failing that discipline, restoring to the point of the morning boot will save the lion's share of grief which is probably 99% of what we need most of the time.

Highly recommended from my brief experience!

Note: Not much motivation to change from GoBack to Rollback Rx unless changing operating systems to Vista or Windows 7 (which is "way preferred" over Vista by the geeks I talk with). Speaking for myself, I prefer Rollback over GoBack for every instance of starting from having no such software at all.

End of David's comments.

It occurs to me, Emily, that an internet cafe owner might rollback his computers each morning to the state where he wants them to be, overriding whatever mischief his customers might have inadvertantly done.