Quick Restart. (disaster recovery utility) (Software Review) (Evaluation)
by Tim Victor

It's a clever idea. Before turning off your computer, you press two keys to save a complete description of the running software onto disk. The next time you power up, Quick Restart quickly re-creates your workspace just as you left it, including any documents you were working on at the time.

According to PowerPro Software, Quick Restart works under DOS versions 3.3 and higher, with or without Windows 3.0 or 3.1. It's compatible with DoubleSpace and other popular disk doublers, and it directly supports many Super VGA and Windows accelerated video cards. But it doesn't get along well with memory managers other than DOS's HIMEM/EMM386 combo and simply refuses to work with QEMM's Stealth mode, which many power users can't afford to give up.

Quick Restart worked well enough on simple systems, but it sometimes froze when restarting a machine loaded with drivers, TSRs, and several fussy applications--the kind of system many of us actually use. It's also a tricky program to install and set up, requiring informed decisions about the details of a system and its CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files. Unfortunately, if you're advanced enough to know how to configure Quick Restart, there's a good chance that it won't work on your system. It's a great idea, and almost--but not quite--a great product.