With apologies, as I wish I could have gotten this up much earlier, I wanted to post what I found with today's GOTD, AyRecovery Lite... I think some may be inclined to pass on it when maybe they would have found it ideal -- others may be tempted to install, later finding out that they've broken their PC/laptop. AyRecovery Lite does add 4 drivers, & in tests Windows will not start if they're not functioning properly -- it also modifies the hidden track at the beginning of the disk/partition. Because of that I'd only suggest installation if/when you can put things back, e.g. restore a partition image backup as well as a backup of that 1st disk track [in Paragon apps you can back up that 1st track when you use the wizard]. I don't know if the app recommends turning off System Restore because it's redundant or because of conflicts, so I wouldn't rely on that alone, plus it does nothing for the disk/partition 1st track. That said, when/if the disk(s)/partition(s) can be fully restored from backup, I think AyRecovery Lite might be a good solution for some folks, protecting a Windows install, restoring it to a baseline configuration in the time it takes to reboot. While I don't think it would hold up in a commercial/public setting -- I think AyRecovery Lite's security too weak for that [get it to turn off & whatever's written to disk] -- IMHO it might work well for the younger members of your family.
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AyRecovery Lite is a bit different than apps like Returnil & TimeFreeze, which write changes to a virtual disk, protecting the real drive/partition... Testing with the XP Mode VM, after copying a 1+ GB file to the VM drive with AyRecovery Lite's protection on, I turned the VM off [basically the same thing as pulling the plug vs. regular Windows shut down] & mounted the .vhd [virtual disk] in win7. That new file was non-existent, nor were there any files approaching that size, i.e. no virtual disk files that could hold it. There were no added partitions either. Copying the same file to the running VM, then turning AyRecovery Lite's protection off, the file stayed put after restarting, without the sort of delay that would have been required to copy 1+ GB. A *guess* would be that the new file's location on the virtual hard drive had never been written to the drive/partition file tables. On the downside, I tried that a few times, copying the file & *pulling the plug*, & the XP Mode VM would not start after that. Changes are made to those file tables during install, but other than the AyRecovery Lite boot menu I don't know what's added or modified. Copies of the registry are stored along with other system data, but I don't know what that other data is -- it wasn't obvious in Notepad or a hex editor. While the 2 services can be set from Automatic [i.e. starting with Windows] to manual, removing the 4 drivers caused XP to not start, normally, in safe mode, or after an attempted AyRecovery Lite repair from its boot menu.
With that potential for problems from driver files becoming damaged or being incompatible, &/or Windows maybe not starting after a power failure or hard reboot I wouldn't install/use AyRecovery Lite without a ready backup that could be [at least relatively] easily restored. OTOH AyRecovery Lite may have some advantages over similar apps, e.g. you don't have a delay as changes are copied to the protected drive/partition like you do with apps using a virtual disk file. And unlike TimeFreeze, AyRecovery Lite doesn't need a tray app to turn it on/off, so it might have a slight edge for restricting users so they can't screw things up.
The drivers themselves are signed by EAZ Solution, Inc. -- Google & it seems it might be the same company as the one behind today's GOTD. The AyRecovery Lite manual [ http://goo.gl/HZg55 ] does list win7 32/64 bit. The installed "AyRecovery Lite" program folder holds 85 file, 7 folders, ~14.7 MB -- "anyue" & "configfix" folders are added to Windows system folder. IMHO registry changes are moderate -- it's hard to give an accurate figure because many changes occurred after reboot when there are loads of changes already just from Windows starting up. To fully remove the app including drivers you'd have to restore the drive/partition 1st track as well as the registry, though you might be able to delete all references to the drivers using Regedit or similar. For restoring the 1st track the only foolproof method I've found is restoring a Paragon backup of that 1st disk track, though there are partition table backup/restore/repair tools that can work [e.g. I've successfully used Partition Table Doc -- EASEUS once had it on GOTD -- but I've had it not work too].
All in all AyRecovery Lite seemed to work just as advertised, but personally I wish they'd put a LOT more info up on their site about how it works, so people could better judge risks/rewards. I don't think I'll use it because I can't see any clear benefits *for me* over TimeFreeze or Returnil or using VMs [Virtual Machines], but that's partly based on guesswork -- like I said, I think they should publish a LOT more info.