System Restore Behaving Strangely.

siouxdax · Mar 22, 2012

Hello:
First off, I'm somewhere between newbie and intermediate when it comes to tech stuff on my PC. I regularly make System Restore Points prior to installing, uninstalling, making some strange settings changes and even as a random checkpoint (as it does itself anyhow). I recently had the need to restore my PC to its previous state, only to find that it says I've never used System Restore or have ever created a System Restore Point. I've had this PC for a few years and it has never exhibited this sort of behavior. Is there a bare minimum of space I should devote to give over to System Restore? I've filled up my drives to the rim with no problems before. I really don't know what to do next, and you folks are the first people I turn to for advice. You've never steered me wrong. So, any input, recommendations, etc would be very greatly appreciated!

Kaktussoft · Mar 22, 2012

siouxdax said:
Hello:
First off, I'm somewhere between newbie and intermediate when it comes to tech stuff on my PC. I regularly make System Restore Points prior to installing, uninstalling, making some strange settings changes and even as a random checkpoint (as it does itself anyhow). I recently had the need to restore my PC to its previous state, only to find that it says I've never used System Restore or have ever created a System Restore Point. I've had this PC for a few years and it has never exhibited this sort of behavior. Is there a bare minimum of space I should devote to give over to System Restore? I've filled up my drives to the rim with no problems before. I really don't know what to do next, and you folks are the first people I turn to for advice. You've never steered me wrong. So, any input, recommendations, etc would be very greatly appreciated!

Check your "system properties" and see if systemsecurity so creating restore points has been enabled. How many percent of disk space have you reserved for restore points and how many GB is that? How many GB is used?

Can you create a manual "restore point"? (post any errors) Do you still don't see it when performing "system restore"?

siouxdax · Mar 22, 2012

Okay, I've checked system properties, and System Restore does seem to be enabled. I've created two Restore Points a couple of hours apart.

I have a 500 GB C drive, and the disk space usage shown in the "System Protection for (C

Primary Source" is currently 720.81 MB. On the "Max Usage" slider it shows 15% (69.85 GB)

Am I simply not giving enough space? I used to have scads of restore points going back months. But in the past couple of years I've been keeping my C drive nearly full, sometimes with less than 1 GB free. Is this my problem? What should my next step be?

BTW, kind regards for the prompt and courteous reply!

Check your "system properties" and see if systemsecurity so creating restore points has been enabled. How many percent of disk space have you reserved for restore points and how many GB is that? How many GB is used?

Can you create a manual "restore point"? (post any errors) Do you still don't see it when performing "system restore"?

Kaktussoft · Mar 22, 2012

I have a 500 GB C drive, and the disk space usage shown in the "System Protection for (C

Primary Source" is currently 720.81 MB. On the "Max Usage" slider it shows 15% (69.85 GB)

69GB is enough, more than enough. But that's the max size... if full then it deletes the oldest restore point automatically. Currently 720MB isn't much, so I think win7 cleared it for unknown reason. If you create a manual restore point again, does the value 720MB change (increase)?

I'm not sure, but maybe win7 automatically deletes older restore points if space is needed on disk. How much free space do you have now on C?

Are you very sure manual created restore points you created a few minutes ago aren't listed in "system restore"?

siouxdax · Mar 22, 2012

69GB is enough, more than enough. But that's the max size... if full then it deletes the oldest restore point automatically. Currently 720MB isn't much, so I think win7 cleared it for unknown reason. If you create a manual restore point again, does the value 720MB change (increase)?

I'm not sure, but maybe win7 automatically deletes older restore points if space is needed on disk. How much free space do you have now on C?

Are you very sure manual created restore points you created a few minutes ago aren't listed in "system restore"?

I created a manual restore point again, and the value increased to 959.23 MB. I'm pretty sure that WIn7 does delete older restore point to make room for new ones. Unless there is some other "restore app" within Win7, it's news to me. I did, though, opened the start menu, typed "system restore". Each of the links provided took me right to the configuration areas we've been discussing. What now? Should I just make more room on my C drive? Is it possible to store the restore points on my secondary D drive?

Thanks again, for all your help!

Kaktussoft · Mar 22, 2012

siouxdax said:
69GB is enough, more than enough. But that's the max size... if full then it deletes the oldest restore point automatically. Currently 720MB isn't much, so I think win7 cleared it for unknown reason. If you create a manual restore point again, does the value 720MB change (increase)?

I'm not sure, but maybe win7 automatically deletes older restore points if space is needed on disk. How much free space do you have now on C?

Are you very sure manual created restore points you created a few minutes ago aren't listed in "system restore"?

Click to expand...

I created a manual restore point again, and the value increased to 959.23 MB. I'm pretty sure that WIn7 does delete older restore point to make room for new ones. Unless there is some other "restore app" within Win7, it's news to me. I did, though, opened the start menu, typed "system restore". Each of the links provided took me right to the configuration areas we've been discussing. What now? Should I just make more room on my C drive? Is it possible to store the restore points on my secondary D drive?

Thanks again, for all your help!

putting restore points on another disk as you asked me, is stupid. an a big performace degree if it's possible at all.

In system settings please check if system restore is enabled on C-disk (I know you did before). But does it only save "prior versions of files", or also "system settings"?

Hoe much free space is on C now?

kado897 · Mar 22, 2012

If you have done a defrag of your disk with anything other than the built in Windows tool then it is possible that it has removed restore points.

siouxdax · Mar 24, 2012

I do use Defraggler, but this issue is recent, and I haven't defragged in ages.

kado897 said:
If you have done a defrag of your disk with anything other than the built in Windows tool then it is possible that it has removed restore points.

siouxdax · Mar 25, 2012

Little update:
I went to make a Manual Restore Point, then looked afterwards. All of the restore points deleted (again) except for the one I just made. I haven't ran anything strange recently. Could a virus be doing this? I only ask this because before I noticed this issue I had downloaded a zip or rar of an album, but when I unzipped it, nothing was there. The next day I noticed this issue...

Kaktussoft · Mar 25, 2012

siouxdax said:
Little update:
I went to make a Manual Restore Point, then looked afterwards. All of the restore points deleted (again) except for the one I just made. I haven't ran anything strange recently. Could a virus be doing this? I only ask this because before I noticed this issue I had downloaded a zip or rar of an album, but when I unzipped it, nothing was there. The next day I noticed this issue...

make another restore point again. Still only the latest remains?

siouxdax · Mar 25, 2012

Yep. Only the latest remain that I made before they were deleted again, so now I have a small list of points to choose from.

make another restore point again. Still only the latest remains?

whs · Mar 25, 2012

putting restore points on another disk as you asked me, is stupid. an a big performace degree if it's possible at all.

Just for your info: you cannot put restore points of e.g. C: on other disks or partitions. Only in the server edition you can do that.

Regarding your problem: I would check the scheduled tasks (schtasks command) and see whether there is any possible culprit that deletes the shadows.

kado897 · Mar 25, 2012

How much space do you currently have free on the drive?

Kaktussoft · Mar 26, 2012

siouxdax said:
Yep. Only the latest remain that I made before they were deleted again, so now I have a small list of points to choose from.

make another restore point again. Still only the latest remains?

Click to expand...

So it's working again? What exactly did you do to fix it?

siouxdax · Mar 26, 2012

Okay, I increased the percentage of disk space allocated to System Restore and it's saving about the last six or seven restore points. In all of this time I never checked my other machine, a Toshiba laptop, and it had the same issue. I guess at one point I decided to only allow something like 5% disk space for System Restore on both machines. Maybe this is simply the culprit.

kado897 · Mar 26, 2012

I'm not sure. My C drive is set to 5% and I can hold a dozen or so but the volume is less than 50% full.

whs · Mar 26, 2012

5% is not a good indication of enough or not. Each restore point takes about 250MB to 1GB of shadowstorage - depending on the amount of data in the partition. So a shadowstorage of 5GB can be good for 5 shadows (restore points) or 20 shadows.

If you run this command, you will see how much is currently used

vssadmin list shadowstorage

And if you run that command, you will see how many restore points you have

vssadmin list shadows

Then you can compute approximately what size your restore points are and allocate the space for the shadowstorage accordingly. The command for that is (for partition C )

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=C: /on =C: Maxsize=xGB (where x is the amount of GB you want to allocate)

Note: if you make the shadowstorage smaller, you will loose current restore points.

siouxdax · Mar 26, 2012

Well on my desktop machine my C drive is 500 GB and I'm now giving it 15% (34.93 GB), but it's current usage is only 1.20 GB, I suppose since I've only created a few points since there were none. I'm going to continue to compare this with my laptop machine over the next couple of days and make sure we're in good shape.

Thanks so much for your help and input!

System Restore Behaving Strangely.

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