Windows 7: Can I Reliably Count On W7 Restore Points?

For the three years I used XP, I desperately needed to use it's restore points to fix a serious problem. In both cases it failed miserably. I would pick a restore point, and XP would start to copy files like everything was OK, and then reboot. Just about the time the desktop started loading, I would get "restore failed", with no explanation. Researching the Internet showed it might be my antivirus and/or firewall interfering. I turned both off and it still failed. Never did figure out why. Because of that, I bought DriveClone as an alternate, and it worked everytime I used it.

Fast forward to new Dell computer with Windows 7. Decided to try a Windows 7 restore point and I'm met with the error message attached. Nooo . . . not again. Disabled Zonealarm and Sunbelt VIPRE through msconfig, booted up and verified they weren't running. Tried the restore point again, and again it failed with the same message.

FINALLY, I tried accessing the restore point from Windows 7's "System Recovery" console (F8). Success! I've tried it a couple more times since with success, as long as I invoke it from F8 during boot up. Call me naive, but I didn't initially realize you could access that from F8. Seems odd to me that the error message doesn't tell you about this option.

Can I really really count on Windows 7's restore points to be more reliable then XP was? Yes, I do complete image backups on occasion, but don't always remember to do them often enough, and they might require going back farther in time then I would prefer.

First a disclaimer Nothing can ever be 100% reliable

Windows 7 restore points are generally much more reliable than windows XP, and I have heard far fewer failure reports than with XP.

With you particular experience the fact that the restore worked from the recovery console (windows not running) after failing when inside windows would point to some blocking application - sometimes even items disabled in MSconfig will still load drivers or services - this may be happening in your case

The prior poster is 100% correct, especially with his warning that nothing is 100% reliable. It has been my experience, and that of many posts that I have seen, that when back up fails, it is usually while backing up. When this occurs the operator is made aware of the problem. If all seems to have gone well, the back up has been made correctly.

No. This has been a problem across windows versions and remains a problem.

Well I use restore points all the time. Like before I install a new piece of software, I'll create a restore point. If I don't like the application I will use CCleaner to remove it, and the previous restore point to restore my system. Never had any problems as of yet. I'm sure you will get conflicting opinions on this topic, but to me as long as you create restore points within a reasonable time frame keeping them current, you'll have a better chance of sucess with them. Fabe

I have used system restore probably 50 times since it became available. It failed to complete perhaps twice, so that is probably a 95% success rate. I wouldn't call that high enough to "really really count on", and that figure is probably below a properly used imaging program. Nevertheless, I appreciate it and will continue to use it as needed. It is certainly quicker than imaging and can bypass a lot of troubleshooting.

I have used it only once on Windows 7, successfully.