why do you have to turn off system restore if you have an infection thats hard to get rid of?By turning off System Restore as SOON as you determine you have an infection, you stop the accumulation of more restore points which contain the infection, and perhaps also help keep those older good restore points from getting overwritten with new restore points.Get him, SB.  Doesn't turning off system restore then turning it back on again remove all previous restore point?
Be gentle, I'm on W2K (no system restore) No, Fed. You get a dialog box that says:

Get back on your meds Dilbert, they will help you. In short, yes. Thanks GX_Man, I only ASKED because of Soybean's POST said otherwise then Dilbert had an each way bet.Yes, I see I made an incorrect statement.  So, if your system is infested with malware, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't, turn off Restore, that is.  If you leave Restore enabled and use it to restore to a time when your system was infested, you gain nothing; indeed, you may be worse off.  And, if you disable Restore, you simply no longer have the option of going back to any restore point.

So, if you're not SURE whether you have a restore point from a time before a malware infestation occurred, either just don't use Restore, or disable it.  It basically makes no difference.  However, the key point may be to disable Restore and thereby erase all Restore Points, if you believe you have no good Restore Points, to eliminate the possibility of a bad Restore Points inadvertently getting restored.Or use a program like TRUE Image and backup your OS and files safely however you like.