Windows 7: Restore point help

My restore points always disappear (I know there are posts like this on here already, but I didn't see one that helped me.).

System protection is on and it's set disk space usage is at 5% (14.25 GB) <-- which seems huge in my opinion.

What I've done so far:
1: DiskCheck- no problem
2: SFC scan - no integrity problems
3: Turned on Windows Backup in “Services” and set to “automatic” (same with Volume Shadow Copy)
4: Turned off SR, restarted computer, turned SR back on (also tried restarting after I turned SR back on)
5: Tried creating manual restore points... always disappear
6: Tried using a script to automatically add one every day... still disappear


What I get from Eventlog/Event Viewer:
Event 14: "The shadow copies of volume C: were aborted because of an IO failure on volume C:."


Other things you may need to know:
-As far as I know, I don't use a dual-boot, just Windows 7
-I don't have a separate driver, so I can't back-up anything


Any ideas?

You certainly have done some self help problem solving. Well done.

I would suggest you again run Check Disk -

Disk Check

Some links for you to peruse. { in no particular order.}

System Restore Point : Create at System Startup

System Restore

Restore Points (Windows)

System Restore "restore points" are missing or deleted

System Restore: frequently asked questions

Windows 7 System Restore, is not creating automatic restore points - Microsoft Answers

Thanks! I always try to do some self diagnosing/solving before asking.

I ran ChkDsk again (this time I checked off both options -automatically fix file system errors AND scan for and attempt recover of bad sectors). It didn't fix my restore point problem, but it made my computer start-up like a champ! If people are having a problem with a slow start-up, maybe you could suggest checking off both options when doing a ChkDsk.


But alas, none of these suggestion seem to help me. I tried them all again and the restore points keep disappearing. Any other ideas?

Not sure what your problem may be. But in the meantime, you may want to do imaging to protect yourself. Free Macrium and free Paragon would be excellent options. Here is a tutorial for Macrium: Imaging with free Macrium

You may also want to check whether the shadowstorage is really allocated. The cmd command is: vssadmin list shadowstorage

Out of interest ,do you have UAC turned off, if so turn it on and try again

@WHS thanks for the Macrium option. What exactly should I be looking for when checking vssadmin list shadowstorage?


@Boohbah Yes UAC is turned on.

When you do the vssadmin, it will show you Used, Allocated and Maximum. Look for the Maximum.

This is what I got:
Used- 0
Allocated- 0
Maximum- 14.25GB (5%)

So at least now we know that shadowstorage was correctly defines - but not used.

1. A question: Did you move any parts of the system to another drive or partition?

2. Check in services whether Microsoft shadow copy provider is set to "Manual" - which would be the correct setting.

1: No I didn't move anything to another drive or partition.
2: Yes, it's set to manual.


OK, I did a little experiment (I wanted to see when the restore points were disappearing):
I created a manual restore point. I immediately checked to see if system restore recorded the point. It did. Well, I was in the middle of doing something, so I decided I'd reboot when I was finished (I assumed the reboot would be what triggered it). I went to check SR again before rebooting (about 20-30mins later) and the point was gone. The computer was never shut off or rebooted and I didn't change anything in the meantime (nothing edited, nothing downloaded, nothing updated). I wonder what's triggering the deletion of these points? They're presumably only retained for about 25min.

This has got to be a clue. No idea how that clue fits into the puzzle, but it seems poignant.