Technology in terms you understand. Sign up for the Confident Computing newsletter for weekly solutions to make your life easier. Click here and get The Ask Leo! Guide to Staying Safe on the Internet — FREE Edition as my thank you for subscribing!

Is there a Windows 7 alternative to the program GoBack?

Question:

I purchased and installed a program GoBack on my old XP computer and it was
easy to use and saved my sanity many, many times. I now run Windows 7 and
GoBack will not work on this system. Is there any program available now that
will do the same thing that GoBack did so well? System Restore only restores
certain time periods while GoBack permitted you to restore your system to
almost any time of day for a previous two or three week period. Thanking you in
advance!

In this excerpt from
Answercast #28
, I look at the power of image backups to restore a system to
a period in time.

]]>

Equivalent to GoBack

The short answer is no, I don’t know of an equivalent to GoBack. Not directly equivalent.

I certainly agree on your position on System Restore. I strongly advise against relying on System Restore for pretty much anything. It’s just been too unreliable in my experience.

  • What I suggest instead is backups.

Image backups

With a good backup system, if you were to take, for example, daily image backups, or daily incremental backups to a monthly full system image backup, you would get 95% of what you had with GoBack. The bottom line is that you could restore your entire system to the state that it was at any of those points in time. Kind of like what GoBack did.

It doesn’t have the granularity of literally any point in time, to the hour level. But it does allow you to say, “You know, ever since Tuesday, my computer’s been screwed up so let’s restore my computer to the state it was in on Monday.”

Any suggestions?

That being said, I know that GoBack was a very popular little utility. I’m going to ask readers if they have a suitable alternative for GoBack. If they’re familiar with what GoBack was in the past, let us know in the Comments.

I’d be very interested in understanding what kind of utilities might be out there today that duplicate, or come close to duplicating, the functionality that GoBack used to have.

Do this

Subscribe to Confident Computing! Less frustration and more confidence, solutions, answers, and tips in your inbox every week.

I'll see you there!

13 comments on “Is there a Windows 7 alternative to the program GoBack?”

  1. It is my understanding that Deep Freeze is Windows 7 compatible. See web site: http://www.faronics.com/standard/deep-freeze-2/

    We used Deep Freeze at our college a few years back and it worked well. We no longer use it. We just re-image a machine if a student gets it messed up, so I can’t speak to how well the current version works from experience.

    Reply
  2. I used to use GoBack, but a few years ago I switched to Rollback RX. It is a program that you have to buy once. This has saved me many, many times–even when I’d accidentally messed up my computer to the point of having to reinstall Windows; or, deleted a necessary program or folder.

    With Rollback RX, any time the computer boots Rollback opens first and gives the user the option of reverting to a previous time. I am surprised that this program is not often recommended !

    Bill

    Reply
  3. I’ve used Eaz-Fix now since Win 7 came out. Works just like GoBack and actually given me less problems than that program did. Saves your butt when nothing else works. Hope that helps.

    Reply
  4. My experience has been the same as Bill’s- I would not hesitate to recommend Rollback Rx to anyone.
    I was happy using GoBack on my previous Win98 PC, but when I started using WinXP I was told that Goback was not compatible.
    I don’t remember where I read about Rollback Rx, but I’ve been using it on my XP machine since 2009. The website [http://www.horizondatasys.com/default.aspx] says it’s compatible with Win7.
    It’s a very effective tool that can be set to take a “snapshot” on bootup and/or every hour, or whenever you want.
    It takes only a few seconds to take a snapshot, but it takes a few minutes to restore one if you need to.
    My practice has been to take a snapshot before trying anything new, and many times I have restored one to revert my PC to the condition it was in before an unexpected outcome happened.
    RBRX has a “subconsole” that allows you to revert the PC to any existing snapshot during bootup.
    And when I have needed help for any reason, their tech support has “held my hand” on the phone while it was being fixed.
    Again, I would not hesitate to recommend RBRX to anyone.

    Reply
  5. Comodo Time Machine is freeware similar to GoBack. There are a ton of user reviews on the Softpedia web site. I used it years ago when it first appeared. I made the mistake of defragging my drive after installation. I had to do an image restore to recover. That was the end of my partnership with Comodo. In my opinion, there is no silver bullet for Windows’ problems. The only practicable solution is good clean image backup coupled with regular file backups–with the realization that full system restores and file reincarnations are necessary obligations with the unstable Microsoft Windows operating system.

    Reply
  6. There is no exact replacement in Windows 7 However Casper 7 is a perfect solution provided the user has two disks. Casper clones the whole active disk to the inactive disk. The first time is a complete copy subsequent copies are “smart” and take two or three minutes with my WD6000HLHX twin drives: the copies can be scheduled as you wish Casper will also auto backup to a portable USB drive, updating it each time it is connected.

    Reply
  7. rollback rx is excellent tool it has saved me many times on windows 7 , I do a lot of installing different software and i take a image before .

    Reply
  8. One really simple thing would be to use compatibility mode
    In Windows 7 and just use Goback, if you really like the
    program that much. Compatibility mode works for a lot of XP
    software.

    Reply
  9. I was tempted to buy Rollback rx since I can’t use GoBack any more, but I did some reading first and concluded that I simply don’t trust the company and their claims.
    They say you can make up to 60,000 snap shots of a system, and each will take just a few seconds, and take basically no room on the disc.
    These claims are not misleading, exaggerating or even over-simplified, they are grossly incorrect and flat out lies.
    The only way this could be true is if there are NO CHANGES to the disc sectors with each snap shot.
    Otherwise the changes would have to be logged, the information saved in order to restore it to that image. This information is stored somewhere, is it not? You got a magic hard drive that can store a deleted 1Gb video or program without using ANY disc space or time? Write speeds of infinite GB/s and compression ratios of infinity:1?
    I will personally not hand over $69 or any amount to someone who just lied to me straight out about their product, and every web site I see mentioning their name links to the same sort of marketing Q&A, typical of someone shotgunning the search engines to put their product in the lime-light, with fake reviews written by employees, etc…
    I would rather do full image backups weekly, then at least I know I can trust the person backing up my stuff.
    Work or not, doesn’t matter, lie to me, no business!
    Maybe I should just go back to Xp so I can use GoBack?
    Well, now I just sound stupid instead of irate, LOL!

    Reply

Leave a reply:

Before commenting please:

  • Read the article.
  • Comment on the article.
  • No personal information.
  • No spam.

Comments violating those rules will be removed. Comments that don't add value will be removed, including off-topic or content-free comments, or comments that look even a little bit like spam. All comments containing links and certain keywords will be moderated before publication.

I want comments to be valuable for everyone, including those who come later and take the time to read.