Windows 7 System Restore

Windows Vista System Restore has been a lifesaver on many occasions. I am now a Windows 7 Home Premium x64 user. I installed the upgrade version of Windows 7 Home Premium x64, what is commonly referred to as an "in-place" install. Everything went smoothly and everything works . . . except system restore. I have 175 GB allocated for restore points and create restore points each time I making changes to my system. In Vista, this worked flawlessly: I never had a failed system restore.

With Windows 7 I repeatedly get "System Restore Failure" with the accompanying message: "An unspecified error occurred during System Restore (0x90071a90)." This happens when I choose different restore points. The system will not restore. However, when I reboot in Safe Mode, System Restore works perfectly. Any ideas why this is happening?

Probably it is your security software not letting go of its files and settings. Norton needs to have an option turned off before you can use SR, as an example...

Update:

I looked at the event viewer and found no errors. I turned off System Restore, which deleted all of my previous restore points, and rebooted. After the reboot, I turned System Restore on and created a Restore Point. I then made a minor system change, and attempted a System Restore. The system successfully restored to the Restore Point I had previously created. It would appear that turning off System Restore, deleting all previous restore points, and restarting System Restore has solved the problem. We'll see how things go. Thanks to all for comments and suggestions.

so wait your computer on 7 makes restore points everytime you change sometimes? doesn't this waste space? or am i confused? what changes constitute making a restore point?

michael31986 said:

so wait your computer on 7 makes restore points everytime you change sometimes? doesn't this waste space? or am i confused? what changes constitute making a restore point?

No. I created the restore point manually. I made a minor system change. I then manually used the System Restore function to restore my system to the Restore point I had manually created. System Restore successfully restored the system to that point.

harpua said:

I would try seeing if something went wrong with your install.

First open an administrative command prompt and type sfc /scannow and hit enter. This will run the system file checker which takes a few minutes to complete. It will check the integrity of your system files and attempt to repair any that are corrupt.

If that doesn't work, you may have to try doing a "repair install." You can check the tutorial section of this forum for precise instructions on how to do that. It does not mess up your data, programs and settings but takes a while to complete.

Btw, I agree with you on the usefulness of system restore, although it is not a substitute for doing real backups. But it sure comes in handy from time to time.

Edit: Never mind, missed the part about rebooting in safe mode. It must be something else, perhaps as suggested above. You might want to take a look at the "Event Viewer" and see if there are any error messages logged that can give you some clues as to what is the cause of the problem. At start, search, type "event viewer" hit enter, and check under applications.

Although it would appear that the System Restore problem has been solved, out of curiosity, I ran the sfc /scannow to see if there were any problems with my system. The scan did find some problems and repaired them. I looked at the log, and couldn't really interpret it, but I rebooted, and ran the scan a second time - no errors were found.

Thanks for the suggestion.

I did this as stated above - sfc /scannow - and one folder comes up. And nothing else happens.

What do I do next?

I have just tuned into this thread because of a restore failure from all restore points - I tried the sfc /scannow which showed a file of the same name, but 'enter' or 'open as administrator' caused a blue window to flash on the screen and disappear before it could be read. Perhaps this is part of the same problem.