Restore from Recovery Options - You Must Enable System Protection

W7 tower goes into a loop at startup so I went into Startup Repair. From the System Recovery Options screen I selected System Restore. It brings up a bunch of dates from 4/24 to 4/18 and prompts me to click an item.

I doesn't seem to matter what date I select - when it brings up the next page it always has a triangle with an exclamation point and the sentences You must always restore the drive that contains windows. Restoring other drives is optional.

Then in the rectangle below there's an empty check box with words Local Disk (C: System) under the heading Drive. Under the heading Status it says You must enable system protection on this drive. At the bottom of the page it has Back, Next and Cancel. Next is grayed out. I cannot put a check in the checkbox.

From the System Recovery Options I can select Command Prompt. If I navigate to the D: drive (which is where it thinks Windows is installed, and I run sfc /scannow I get a message There is a system repair pending which requires reboot to complete. Restart Windows and run SFC again.

Needless to say the restart accomplishes nothing.

Ranger4 said:

This Forum Tutorial might help you.

SFC /SCANNOW : Run in Command Prompt at Boot - Windows 7 Help Forums

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, this particular Windows 7 tower is running a 32 bit version of W7 Professional and I only have a disc for the 64 bit version of Pro. When I boot from my disc, go to the command prompt in the Recovery options and type
sfc /scannow /offbootdir=D:\ /offwindir=D:\windows
I get the msg This version of system recovery options is not compatible with the version you are trying to repair. Try using a recovery disc that is compatible.

If I remove the disc, boot the PC, go to Repair this computer, access command prompt and type in the same sfc scan command as above I get the Beginning system scan. This process will take some time followed by Windows resource protection could not perform the requested operation.

TechnoMage2016 said:

OK, you have got me.


System Restore and System Repair are like apples and oranges. Are not the same thing and all too often are confused for each other

You've lost me... When you boot your PC from a Windows 7 disc you have only 2 options - Install Windows or Repair You Computer. Choosing Repair will ultimately get you to the System Recovery Options. Startup Repair is the first option in that list but I was using the option for System Restore, which is where I ran into problems.

TechnoMage2016 said:

After many OS installs, System Restore will be OFF and must be manually turned ON. Once ON, it will only create a system Restore Point when MS Updates are installed or some program is installed that actually makes its own Restore Point.

I test many new programs and quite often I want to totally back out of the install. So I run System Restore to backup the system to the first Backup Image file of the day.

I depend on System Restore so much that I force a new Restore Point to be created every time I boot up my PC. (thanks Sean, for that neat little script that creates a new Restore Point) I run that script from my Startup folder.

I don't remember ever actually running "System Repair".

Good Luck!

I'm not sure the rest of this has anything to do with my situation. System Restore certainly seems to be turned on, evidenced by the display of restore points. It's using them that is problematic.