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General discussion

Windows 7 system restore deleting restore points

by wiz74 Feb 14, 2011 8:23AM PST

I'm running Windows 7 Home Premium on a Dell Inspiron N7010. My system restore points are continuously deleting somehow. I have created restore points manually and I have seen the occasional restore point created from system updates. I will then check back after about an hour or so and the restore point is no longer there! I found that my volume shadow copy service was stopped - I restarted it and set it to auto start. I have system protection set to restore system settings and previous versions of files and have 1.46GB set aside for restore points. I have had it set as high as 2.93GB. I have my laptop set to go to sleep when I close the lid, so I'm wondering if that may be an issue.

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4 Posts
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2.93GB sounds low.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Feb 14, 2011 9:26AM PST

Here I let it use as much as it likes. With today's huge drives there is little need to limit this.
Bob

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Turn off System Restore and then turn it back on.
by BlackBart1955 Feb 14, 2011 12:38PM PST

This will reset all the drives and it should work to fix your problem. That is what I do whenever I have that same problem, and it always works on my computer and laptop.

You should also turn it off and back on whenever you run your backup program to restore one of the drives. This will make sure that all the drives are in sync with each other.

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That did it!
by wiz74 Feb 14, 2011 11:27PM PST

I turned system restore off & back on & now my restore points are staying there! Thanks so much!

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You're welcome
by BlackBart1955 Feb 15, 2011 4:57AM PST

I'm glad it helped.

I forgot to mention that you should turn it off and back on every once in a while--especially after installing a lot of programs, including Windows Updates. If it gets too many restore points, then it has been my experience that it would stop functioning properly. Then when you need it and run it, it will go through the motions, but after it restarts the system, it will tell you that it failed to update the system. When you try another restore point, and then another, you will find that none of them work.

This and all the other problems that I mentioned are from the Windows XP days, and Microsoft still hasn't fixed it. In addition, I have found that when it does work, it's not always accurate, because I have occurances where it restored a program's folders, but not the files, so I had to re-install that program, and I wondered what else could have been wrong that I didn't know.

I don't like System Restore, and only use it when I don't want to wait for 45 minutes for Acronis True Image to restore my system with my latest backup. However, after the problems I have experienced with System Restore not working properly, I use Acronis exclusively whenever I have a problem. I just make sure to make a backup each time I make a major change, such as installing a new program.

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