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System Restore in Windows

Last modified: 2012-02-28 16:18:33 EET

System Restore (aka System Protection in Windows Vista and 7) literally turns back time for your computer - it restores the system files and settings that were used at a time when your computer was still working well. It also restores your previous Windows password in case you have changed it recently - so make sure you remember your previous password!

Do not worry, System Restore will not touch your documents, e-mails, pictures, videos, etc. It will restore only system and program files and settings in Registry. But if you have installed a program after the time you want to restore your system to, you will still have to reinstall that program.
Never expect System Restore to remove a virus, rootkit or any other malware - use free anti-virus programs and free anti-malware programs for this job. 

System Restore is available both in Safe Mode and while running Windows normally. The only difference is that after restoring to an earlier restore point in Safe Mode of Windows Vista or 7, the action cannot be undone; if you have Windows running normally, you can undo the restoration.

If you do not need to read about System Restore configuration, jump to getting into Safe Mode or using System Restore part.

Configuring System Restore in Windows

First, let's see System Restore options. Open Basic System Information by using keyboard shortcut Windows Key+Break, or right-click Computer icon on Desktop or in Start menu and select Properties.

In Windows XP, click to open the System Restore tab.
In Windows Vista and 7, click the System Protection link on the left side of the window.

Windows Vista users will meet User Account Control. Click Continue.
 

In Windows XP, make sure that there is no check mark in the Turn off System Restore on all drives box. If there is, clear it and click Apply to re-enable System Restore.
Find Available drives. Here you have a list of hard drives or partitions available in your computer.
In Windows XP, verify that at least one drive has "Monitoring" written in the Status column.
In Windows Vista, check that at least one drive is selected.
In Windows 7, ensure that at least one drive has "On" written in the Protection column.
  

In Windows XP and 7, you can configure how much disk space is reserved for restore points. There must be at least 1 gigabyte of free space on the disk for System Protection to work. One restore point uses around 300 megabytes.
Windows Vista will use up to 15% of total disk space and Microsoft provides no way of configuring it.

To adjust System Restore disk space usage in Windows XP or 7, click the drive that has Windows installed on it. Usually its letter is C: and Windows 7 has "(System)" written after it. Then click Settings... or Configure....
In the Disk Space Usage section, adjust the Disk space to use (Windows XP) or Max Usage slider to suit your needs.  This defines how much disk space will be reserved for restore points. In Windows 7, this also includes previous versions of files (if configured so). If you have very limited disk space, set it to at least 600 MB (megabytes) - this is the absolute minimum I would recommend. But in case you have a large hard disk with plenty of space available, you can reserve 1-5 GB (gigabytes) for System Restore and Previous Versions. Generally, 10-15% of disk space is the maximum I would use on large drives.

In Windows 7, verify that under Restore Settings the Restore system settings and previous versions of files is selected. This does not mean that System Restore will overwrite your documents, pictures, videos, e-mails or other personal data - this just enables backing up and restoring different versions of documents you have in your Documents folder and its subfolders. For example, if you accidentally delete or overwrite a document or folder, you can recover it using Previous Versions. You can see how much space is currently being used for System Protection in Current Usage row.

The Delete button (in Windows 7 only) is meant to use with care on system drive. You should never click it if you already have problems with your Windows 7. Clicking this button will remove all system restore points and previous versions of documents and therefore makes restoring your Windows 7 to an earlier point of time impossible.

Click OK to close settings for the selected hard drive.

Turning System Protection off for non-system or external hard drives

Some computer vendors divide a hard disk into two partitions - one for Windows, the other for recovery. The second partition usually has a name (label) that includes the word "recovery", such as "HP_Recovery".
Also, you might have external disks or more than one hard disk in your computer and you might not want to use other drives than system drive (the one with Windows) for System Protection.

In Windows XP, click to select the drive for which you want to turn System Restore off. Then click Settings....
 

Enable the Turn off System Restore on this drive option and click OK.
 

Click Yes in the warning dialog to turn System Restore off for the selected drive.
 

In Windows Vista, clear the check mark for the drive you do not need for System Protection.
 

Click Turn System Restore Off.
 

In Windows 7, click to select the non-system drive. Click Configure... button.
 

Select Turn off system protection in the Restore Settings section.

Click Yes to turn off system protection for the drive.

Creating a system restore point manually

You might want to create a restore point before installing a program you do not really know much about or before making changes to Windows or its registry.

In Windows XP, open Start menu and browse to All Programs, Accessories, System Tools. Click System Restore.

Then select Create a restore point and click Next.

In Windows Vista and 7, click Create... in System Properties window, System Protection tab
 

Type a description for the restore point and click Create.
 

Restore point creation will take some time, stand by. After the process is complete, click Close.
 

Getting into Windows Safe Mode

If you are already in Safe Mode or your Windows is able to start and run, scroll down here to go to System Restore part.

To start Windows in Safe Mode, you will have to press F8 key on your keyboard after the big logo or black screen with white texts appears.
On some computers you will see a boot selection after pressing F8, cancel that by pressing Esc key on your keyboard and then press F8 key again.

First you might see an operating system selection screen. Select the correct one with arrow keys and press Enter key. If you already pressed F8 repeatedly, this screen might not appear.

There are three different types of Safe Mode available, select the first one - pure Safe Mode.
 

Windows will load and check essential files and drivers. Next, it checks if a disk is marked "dirty" due to messed files and failed shutdown or startup.
If none of disks is flagged as containing errors, Windows starts in Safe Mode right away.

If a disk or partition needs checking, hard drive activity indicator light will flash or stay on for several minutes or even up to half an hour. Do not turn off or restart your computer while the disk activity indicator light is on or flashes - you might cause severe damage to files on the disk!
If your hard disk needs some hard fixing, Windows might restart your computer once or twice before starting Safe Mode. In such cases, use F8 key again to choose Safe Mode, do not let Windows start normally.

In case your computer restarts more than three times without going to Safe Mode or it stops responding for more than 30 minutes during disk check, then Windows files are badly damaged and you will have to use other ways of repairing it (see next articles).
 

In Windows XP, you might see a black screen with "Safe Mode" written to every corner for a while. This is normal.
Then you will see your familiar logon screen. Click your user name, type your password and log on as usual. Both Start Menu and My Computer will have Classic look, because Windows themes are disabled in Safe Mode. Desktop background will be black with white "Safe Mode" written to all four corners of screen.
In Windows XP, a dialog asking to choose between Safe Mode and System Restore appears. Click No here to start System Restore right away.
In Windows Vista and 7, Windows Help and Support will open a help page on Safe Mode. Close the window.
 

Restoring to an earlier point with System Restore

If System Restore is not open yet in Windows XP, open Start menu and browse to All Programs, Accessories, System Tools. Click System Restore.
In Windows Vista and 7, clicking on Start button or press Ctrl+Esc on your keyboard, type "system restore" into Start menu Search box and click System Restore.
 

If you have no restore points available or System Protection is turned off, you are out of luck with System Restore. This might be because a virus or some malware has disabled System Restore completely. Scroll to the beginning of this article and see how to turn System Protection on.

If you have both Windows XP and Windows Vista or Windows 7 installed on the same hard disk or partition, then starting Windows XP deletes all Windows Vista/7 restore points - stupid, but for some reason Microsoft decided to implement it this way. You must use Repair your computer then.

If you do have something to restore, you will be reminded that System Restore will not affect your documents, e-mails or other personal data - just programs and their settings will be restored. Click Next.
 

In Windows XP, a calendar appears. The dates that are in bold have restore points. Select the one you need and click Next.
 

In Windows Vista, a list of all available restore points is displayed. Select the point you need and click Next.
 

In Windows 7, not all available restore points are shown in case you have recently created a restore point yourself. In that case, put a check mark in the Show more restore points box.

To see which programs will be affected by restoring to an earlier restore point of Windows 7, click the one you want to restore in the list and then click Scan for affected programs. Building the list will take a while.
Check the Programs and drivers that will be deleted list and the Programs and drivers that might be restored list. Please note that restoring a program does not always mean that this program will start or work correctly - you might still have to reinstall the program. Click Close.

In Windows XP, a summary screen appears. Click Next.
Ignore any warnings about the drives where System Restore was turned off.

In Windows Vista and 7, System Restore warns that restoring cannot be undone if you are using it in Safe Mode. Click Yes to start restoring. This warning does not appear if you start System Restore while Windows runs normally.

The restoration process usually logs all users off and message "Windows is shutting down" might be displayed. Do not worry, System Restore just needs to unlock files and settings before it can run properly.

Restoration process takes time - from ten minutes to several hours is absolutely normal. Do not reboot or power off your computer during the restoration process!
First, System Restore initializes and restores Windows files and settings (no, your documents are not affected!), then it will clear temporary files.

After System Restore is complete, your computer will restart. If Windows starts normally, then the restoration probably solved your problem. Please note that the restart and logging on after System Restore might take noticeably more time than usual - this is normal just this once.

If Windows will not restart your computer automatically in three hours, verify that the hard disk activity indicator light is not on and does not blink within a minute. You can then press reset button or hold down power button for more than 5 seconds to reboot or turn off your PC. After turning off, wait 20 seconds and turn the computer back on.
Windows should start normally and System Restore was probably not interrupted.

Log on as usual and you will hopefully see a System Restore success dialog. Click Close. If the restoration affected programs or drivers, you might need to reinstall them - but make sure that they are not the cause of your Windows problems! Reinstall one of the programs or drivers and then restart to see if Windows works correctly. Then continue with reinstalling the second one, restart again, etc. Welcome to the world of troubleshooting! 
 

If System Restore fails

In case System Restore did not finish its job well enough, you will see an error message after logging on to Windows. Read the Details part carefully - this includes the probable cause of failure.
Here system was rebooted during restore (you should never do that while restoring!). Click Run System Restore to retry restoring to an earlier point of time.

Here System Restore was not able to access some file or files. Although the details part talks about anti-virus programs, the real cause was that files or folders were messed up on hard disk drive. You should boot into Safe Mode then, because a disk check is always performed before starting Windows. Then, in Safe Mode, retry the restoration process.
Click Close in such case.

Undoing a System Restore

If restoration itself succeeds, but you have even more problems than before, you can undo the last System Restore operation. In Windows Vista and 7, you can undo only if you ran System Restore in normal mode of Windows, not Safe Mode! In other cases, just restore some other restore point available (jump up here).

To undo the last restoration, run System Restore again:

• In Windows XP, open Start menu and browse to All Programs, Accessories, System Tools. Click System Restore.
• In Windows Vista and 7, open Start menu and type "system restore" into Search box. Then click System Restore in search results.

If System Restore detects a previously restored state, you have an option to undo it.
Select Undo my last restoration (in Windows XP) or Undo System Restore. Then click Next.
In Windows XP, ignore any warnings about disks that had System Restore turned off.
 

Click Next or Finish to start undoing.
 

In Windows Vista and 7, a warning about interrupting System Restore appears. Click Yes.

You will again be logged off and System Restore will take from 10-30 minutes to several hours. After Windows starts again, log on and check that you see success message about System Restore Undo.

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