Can't "RESTORE"!!!!!! HELP !!!! PLEASE

BACKGROUND: hp pavilion 7970, ME os , 128 Mb of ram with 44 % system resources free. oe 6, computer operator knows just enough about computers to be very, very DANGEROUS.:D :D

i've been noticing that my ability to restore my computer has been in danger & now i can't do that at all !!!

in the past i noticed that sometimes the computer wouldn't automatically do a system check point as often as i wished...so, when ever i thought abt it..i'd do a restoral point on my own.

however...this ability has gradually been diminished over the past couple months and as of today...it's no longer something i can do :( :( :(

1) i couldn't either go back to an earlier restoral point or add a restoral point unless i shut down the computer & restarted.

2) then last month, i noticed that when i clicked on 'the previous" month arrow shown on the upper left of the calendar on the restoral site..it went from july to december 2006 ????? there was no way i could get jun, may, apr 2007 etc.!!!

3) then noticed that there was no automatic restoral check points for over 1 month & it kept on giving a message block advising me that "system restoral is not able to create a restoral point (or go back to an earlier point). please restart & then run system restore again" but even if i did that...i couldn't do anything

4) today i again tried to enter a restoral point (since i think the last time it was done was done back in jun BUT i can't really verify that since now the calendar just shows aug 2007 & i can't go backward or forward on this calendar (gone are the days when i could get dec 2006 on the calendar, even though that's not what i wanted)

i'm afraid that if i get in trouble now, i won't be able to restore & all will be lost!!!

please help !!!!

thanks,

p.s. whenever i do a restoral..i've always do a defrag, cleane the disk, end all the running programs except 2-3 vital ones & have no background or screen saver on....i've done it this way for years & never had a problem till now.

The DOS-based Windows OSs only save five system restore points, and won't make more until older ones are purged if I remember correctly. The quantity can be changed by a Registry hack but I don't recall offhand what it is.

There's a chance that your ME install is just old and tired and could use a reinstall. (I got 6 years out of my old 98SE and it was pretty sad the last few weeks.)

If all you have are the HP recovery disks, you'd need to back up all your "stuff" to disk or flash drive or other separate drive, since the OEM disks will bring the computer back to production configuration. All your third-party apps will be lost unless you saved the installers.

There is a way to do a DOS-based system restore on ME if worst comes to worst. It still uses the Windows restore points, though, I think.