Windows 7: System Restore points disappearing

Hi Barefoot,

With Max usage set to 4GB it doesn't work. As soon as I reboot the SR space is deleted. Even 12GB and 25GB don't work. The only thing I was able to do is setting it to unbounded, take some RP's and reduce max usage to 25GB. Then the system worked for about 31 RP's and suddenly flushed everything at reboot. I could not make it work again with 25GB. I had to disable SR, reboot and re-enable SR. Then reset the max allocated to unbounded and it worked again.

After that I tried to reduce max usage to 12GB and again it was flushed.

Now trying again to reduce it to 25GB.

At least I am able to make it work again but for how long ? And with an unstable system.

Hello Fdc.



It's too bad you're having such issues as I'm fresh out of suggestions; maybe someone else will come up with some other ideas for you, I hope so; thanks for the update.

Hello, Barefoot,

Yesterday I did some more testings on the allocated maximum space of the vssadmin. Finally I was able to make restore points work with a max allocated size of +/- 50GB. This means that Windows 7 in my case doesn't accept to work with the shadowspace smaller than the HDD free space. I have now between 50 and 60GB free.

When I play with the slider in the system protection tab I have started the max allocated usage at 100% (93,3GB) and brought it gently down to 75GB, 60GB, till 50GB everything went smooth. As soon as I tried 40GB or even 25GB, 12GB and 4GB the snapshot area got flushed with the eventlog errors as usual.

I noticed that there is a big difference in the used SR space depending on the max allocated you reserve. With 4GB the Restore ponts increase in chunks of 100/300MB but with the max allocated 100% it becomes chunks of 1GB. I don't understand this difference. The restore points are of the same capacity but take more space. For seven RP's Windows needed 11.22GB!

What I also experienced is that sometimes after a flush the used SR space is not released immediately although the system says that there are no RP's left. When I then made the next RP, it took the next shadowcopy number instead of starting at copy 1. (See "Vssadmin list shadows" where each shadow is named "Harddiskvolumeshadowcopy1", 2, 3 etc ...). The HDD free capacity is also not decreasing. You have to reboot with the flush occuring the next time to see the freed diskspace.

Conclusion: if I dare to set the maximum allocated usage to lower than the current free HDD space Windows flushes the SR area. But it can happen that a 3 or 4 Gb doesn't make a difference.

I can of course not accept this because I need to work with only 15 to 11GB free space.
Is there somewhere a note that says that restore points do not work with less than 15GB free HDD space. If so I definitly will have to do a fresh windows installation and by a new laptop.

Hello again Fdc.



First, let me clarify something, as RPs are created and they fill the allotted space older RPs are deleted by Windows to make room for the newest ones, even at you max of 100GBs eventually the older RPs will be removed by the OS; not to mention as RPs become older (in Vista 90 days) they become less dependable to use to do a System Restore; I, myself, have never done a restore back more than a couple days as most of the problems I cause I know almost as soon as I have done it that it's going to be a problem and I go ahead and do the restore and get it over with.
I rely less and less on SR now as I don't make as many stupid mistakes as I did when I first got Vista and now Windows 7.

I have never allocated more than 4GB to SR and I have never heard of these types of issues you're having with System Restore, I'm baffled as to the cause.

Here is an excellent tutorial that will aid you in always having new /fresh RPs at hand every time you start or restart the PC, have a look at the link below.

System Restore Point : Create at System Startup

Thank you Barefoot, this script will help a lot. I'll put it in the startup folder so i'll have every time a fresh restore point at startup. I put a shortcut on the desktop as well. Very handy tool indead.

Hello Fdc.



Well at least I've been some help to you; keep an eye on this thread in the following days as someone may stop be to help out, let's hope so.

Could Office XP with Frontpage somehow be the cause of that strange SR behaviour? I read somewhere that it could be but I'm wondering if it was not Office 97 instead.

Oh mate I'm no help here as I've only used Office 2007 and 2010.


I have to ask, you're not dual booting XP and Windows 7 because XP will "eat" RPs in both Windows 7 and Vista every time you boot into XP then back into one of the others.


System Restore Points - Stop XP Dual Boot Delete - Vista Forums

No Barefoot, I did a clean install: Windows 7 over Windows XP with the Microsoft easy transfer tools and the Old Windows directory to setup the personal profiles and the documents. I never managed dual booting on this comp.

This makes me wonder if for some reason this is having some effect on your RPs?


If / when you get the chance to make backups and do a clean install of Windows 7 I would be very interested to see the outcome.

Clean Install Windows 7