Why do people not have any System Restore points

Thorsen said:

I agree antharr. Unfortunately, most people dont know how to create backup images or even use system restore. I think it is great to have as default on the machine. I think it should be replaced with a better backup option if you know what you are doing, but for the general public it is great. Again, just my opinion.

I also in no way meant to insult anyone or say anyone here is a Triple Threat. I probably have been in my younger years learning the system and thinking I knew everything.

No offense here. I myself have been guilty of thinking I knew much more than I really did. It's only when you are looking at a hosed machine that you realize you were a tad bit too cocky. That's how we learn though.

antharr said:

No offense here. I myself have been guilty of thinking I knew much more than I really did. It's only when you are looking at a hosed machine that you realize you were a tad bit too cocky. That's how we learn though.

Very, very true. Been there;done that.

Let me pour a little more oil on the fire

Just checked my home Pro X64 system and it appears that every time the virus signature database for Windows Security Essentials is updated, it creates a restore point first.


Since these updates are happening every day, via Automatic Updates, I'm getting a restore point a day at home, but not at work which also runs Windows Security Essentials. There I let the updates happen whenever WSE wants to install them. At home I often use the "New updates are available" icon in the System Tray to install them (impatient).

Just saw this thread:

https://www.sevenforums.com/performan...tml#post684217

In that one, richc46 said

"System restore will only make an automatic point if none were made in the last 7 days."

with a link that eventually ended up here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa378910(VS.85).aspx

so that answers my question about frequency of restore point creation.

I have SR turned off for all but my boot drive which is a 80GB SATA and SR at 3% uses 2.3GB which seems to hold about 8 restore points.

SIW2 said:

The complainers obviously don't realize how useful it is - and what's the point of having that disk space sitting there empty.

I really didn't hear anyone complaining. I would complain if Windows would not allow me to disable it. I do realize it can be useful for some and that's all good. I have only stated that it has failed on me and imaging has had a 100% success rate. Therefore I prefer to use images and backups. I have been using this feature for about 10 years now and it has become obvious that it's not something I would trust as a backup plan for my machines.

Also it isn't about the disk space because I have plenty of that. I don't like something chewing up resources when I never intend to use it.

SIW2 said:

I wasn't referring to you, Antharr - you obviously know what you are doing and have your own backup strategy.

I meant those who complained about it on Vista.

People used to complain Vista "used up " a lot of disk space.

That's largely because the Vista default is to create a restore point every 24 hrs ( unless one has already been made in the last 24 hrs ).

The complainers obviously don't realize how useful it is - and what's the point of having that disk space sitting there empty.

Gotcha. Sorry about the misunderstanding.

SIW2 said:

System restore is little understood and imo a work of genius.

It doesn't always fix the problem - but it's extremely useful.

+ 1

Personally, I manually create mine when making certain changes - just so it doesn't get automatically deleted. Space is not an issue for me, so I have configured SR to use a larger % of space. I then decide when it's okay to delete the saved restore points.


If for some reason SR fails to it's job, then I simply boot into another installation, copy what I need from my user directories etc and then format and start from scratch.


However that is merely my personal method which suits me.