[jggimi]

Unfortunately, I am prevented both by Policy Group where automated governance can be applied, and by corporate policy when it can't -- from installing infrastructure software of any kind.

And, even though it might reduce their workload -- the MS System Restore feature is not used by the desktop support staff. It is also effectively unavailable to desktop users, who are not normally given any admin-level authority on their personal desktops.

Granted, MS's System Restore doesn't solve every problem, and may create new ones, but it is a simple thing to try, and, if it works, it is far faster than the typical 3-4 hour turnaround for a re-imaging and the two following days of pushed patches, automated and manual installs, and manual steps of reconfiguration, restoration, and recovery borne entirely by the desktop user.

My complaint really centers on the fact that every time I've opened a problem of this nature -- this last one, prompting the thread, was an error in the WinMgt repository, which I reported -- they jumped straight to a re-imaging, and came and collected the lappy for half a day. Never any attempt to analyze, repair, recover, or restore.

It tells me that the effort to do diagnostics is significantly more costly and difficult and time consuming than the minimal effort expended to re-image. I'm sure the latter is completely automated. Unfortunately, from my perspective, the cost to the -user- for the re-imaging has been left unaccounted for.

And while the Acronis tool may be better than System Restore, it still doesn't alleviate the complexities -- or impossibilities -- of actually -fixing- a Windows platform when it comes down with a case of OSitis.