Restore points disappeared

Drivecleanup aside for the moment--

I unchecked the autoplay because the screen just referenced CD/DVD's and no USB devices. I don't get it, flash drives were around even with before SP1 let alone initial Win7 and the OS 'autoplays' when the flash drive is inserted. I'm thinking that a solution attempt would have been to reset then add back the applicable auto runs--but like I said, there is no applicable (USB) inserted device option to define after reset. Strange.

(EDIT): I had downloaded deviceclean by mistake. Attached are the results from -t. Two questions:
1. When a device is removed, is it simply automatically reinstalled when seen by the OS next time such as the an external drive, USB's, etc?
2. I think the only device that would be a catastrophe for this tool to remove would be one of the two internal drives. Is the tool just for 'plugged' in devices? Is there any removal (type) that if done would be characterized as a really, really stupid move?

markg2 said:

(EDIT): I had downloaded deviceclean by mistake. Attached are the results from -t. Two questions:
1. When a device is removed, is it simply automatically reinstalled when seen by the OS next time such as the an external drive, USB's, etc?
2. I think the only device that would be a catastrophe for this tool to remove would be one of the two internal drives. Is the tool just for 'plugged' in devices? Is there any removal (type) that if done would be characterized as a really, really stupid move?

In Post #1 you wondered if the USB problem might be related to the SR point question, and IMO the answer to that was "maybe" though Windows should NOT have ever allowed you to set-up SR points on a removeable drive. In any case, I learned a long time ago that one should "fix known problems, then if you do that sometimes other ones go away". Hence the USB thing.

I have used DriveCleanup for years and have never had a problem with it as I said before. Further I have never seen as long a list of items to remove as yours. So it looks ugly to me because the entries represent a lot of junk for the OS to wade through. What DC does AFAIK is it starts with: what is Connected? Ignore that. Then it proceeds with: what is Not Connected and what regvalues are associated with the unconnected items? That's your 53.

To your questions:

1. Yes, if you remove a device and uninstall its driver, when you re-insert the device it will re-install the driver

2. The tool does only affect non-present, not-currently-plugged-in USB devices. For grins plug something(s) in, run drivecleanup -t again, and observe those items are missing from the "stuff to remove" list.

As for potential problems/stupid moves I would ask: Do you know about Windows Device Manager (right-click computer on desktop, select Manage, then Device Manager)? If you were to eg. use Device Manager to uninstall an internal drive, you could reboot, or just select Action/Scan for hardware changes and the drive would re-install itself. So I don't know how the USB tool, even if it somehow screwed-up, could break your PC, but neither can I promise you it won't.

So if you're not comfortable with doing it, or if the problem is so minor you don't care about it, then don't do it.

Sorry for the confusion. No points on the USB/flash drive. I comingled the RP oddity with the USB error thinking they might be related having cropped up within a similar time frame. My wife volunteers as bookkeeper/treasurer for 2 nonprofits and uses the flash drives to shuttle QB and excel/word data files between home and the 2 locations plus backup. She's convinced putting different program data on the same drive could mess up something, hence, the 'plethora' of flash drives ;-). As you have explained I feel fine running the removal and will do so when I get home. I'll then turn the auto run back on, try a few USB insertions and see.

There's another problem that seems to have cropped up with the other two that I've been trying to diagnose with no success but I'm holding off posting until these two are about done.

I see now that the way your wife uses portable drives means that you probably aren't even ABLE to connect them all at one time so that DriveCleanup only cleans the missing ones. Further, she no doubt plugs devices in and out into different ports each time as well, adding to the "ghost" (greyed) items in DevMgr. I myself could never remember "only plug this stick into this port", and I can't disagree either with her plethora of drives--the more baskets she uses, the less chance of losing all her eggs so-to-speak. I can only imagine that BACKUPS of the myriad of drives might be hard to make and track!!!

FWIW Mark I just DL'ed another Uwe Sieber tool called DeviceCleanup which appears to affect a superset of Device Manager items (not just USB) and also is a Windows app (not cmd.exe). What it basically does is uninstall EVERYTHING that is not currently connected, not just USB stuff. The joy of this tool for nerds like me is that while I often times go into DevMgr and Uninstall every greyed item, I have to do them one-at-a-time. Instead I ran it just now and could "Select All" and then use CTRL-click to De-select items I was certain I wanted to keep, and all the rest got deleted at once. It also has under its File menu a "Create Restore Point" selection which is always a good idea to do before system changes.

Which is where we started. Image backups are great (I use Acronis TI 2014 but only from the startup iso, not with Windows running) and so are Restore Points for those "oops" moments. I see this thread is checked as "Resolved" and I must've missed the solution. Maybe you just turned it back on and it's working again. If yes that's best to have done and make a fresh SR before fiddling with the USB problem.