Windows 7: How long does restoring to an earlier point usually take?

Hi all. After having trouble with broadband issues after upgrading, I thought it could be a settings problem so did a system restore to undo anything I had done. But it has been going for around an hour and a half and is stuck on the initializing stage for ages. Just wondering how long it should take, getting slightly worried?

Is there any safe way to get out of it if it is stuck? If so I probably will find a different way around it. Don't want to be breaking my laptop. Quite annoying really.

Thanks for any help.

Normally it takes about 15 minutes. But it depends on what has changed and how long in time you go back.

Is your harddisk light still burning or flickering so there's activity? See you some animation on your screen? look carefully!

Please wait till finished!

All restore operations take place in 1 transaction. So it succeeds or is automatically rollbacked on startup. It least that's the way it should work.

Thanks for replying. There is still animation etc, it logged off and is now on the Please wait initializing stage. It's been on that screen for a while, a lot longer than 15 minutes lol. Only put it back to a restore point created on Wednesday so hardly any difference. Is there no safe way to get out of it now?

Searching other forums, this is the vista equivalent of the stage I'm stuck on;

It's only initialzing so not actually started... whatever microsoft meant by that.
Not sure in what state it's now. Maybe it already broke your computer. I don't think so btw.

Did you ever succesfully perform a "system restore"?

If it's really doing a system restore, let's say half of it.... it is rollbacked automatically. At least that should work like that.

If not then you have a unreliable system. But performing a system restore later to the same date/time or prior to that should fix that anyway.

Please wait another 1 hour. If it's still initializing, then power off your system the hard way. After that:

• enter Advanced Boot Options
• select "repair your computer"
• now you have System Recovery Options
• now do System Restore

Yeah, surely it should actually be restoring now and have past this step? It's been doing it for a lot longer than I would of thought it should. And a succesful restore has been done before.

Thanks

harddisk light is still blinking?

Note: For best results, you should run System Restore from safe mode.
If you receive an error while restoring, then use it from safe mode and it should work fine. To get into Safe mode, you can reboot and use the F8 key right before Windows starts up.

But even better is from within recovery environment.

Maybe some virus/malware or antivirusscanner is blocking the system restore now? In recovery environment run a special small windows version so no interference of trouble-software

Just went to check again and it is doing something and now is doing something to the registry, so I guess it will work, just slowly. Thanks for all your help.

always watch animation and disk activity to see if it's working. Be patient!!