Solved Access & *selectively* delete some old Restore Points in WIN7 Home-P

[pellis777]

Access & *selectively* delete some old Restore Points in WIN7 Home-P

Depending on how I look for them (admin cmd rstrui) I have:

Either 54 system restore points: 6 recent and the rest from 2015-2020,

Or, via routes to selective deletion, described below, only the 6 recent ones (Aug 2021-present).

Apparently confirming the larger number, System Protection/Configure says I'm holding 158 GB (!) of all 54 SRPs, and creating a new one seems to use only about 1GB without deleting any of the oldest ones (so the older ones, if they really exist, must be pretty large).

If I try to reach the older ones to selectively delete (I don't want to lose all of the oldest ones), e.g. via the advice in
Please Wait... | Cloudflare

...the Vssadmin console tool only finds the latest 6 SRPs.

Likewise, C-Clean also recognises only the same 6 SRPs.

And the site to System Restore Explorer, from https://www.nicbedford.uk/software/systemrestoreexplorer/
...doesn't seem to be working.

Can anyone please advise me how to:

1) confirm that the old SRPs really do exist (and if not, how do I clear the 150 excess GB attributed to them?

2) how else to try to reach them to selectvely delete some of the 48 older ones.

Advice greatly appreciated - P

 

[SIW2]

...the Vssadmin console tool only finds the latest 6 SRPs.

you could use a disk explorer type program which should find any large files

Glary do a free one Glary Disk Explorer - Search all of your local drives and individual drivers | Glarysoft

 

[pellis777]

Thank you, SIW2, I'll give that a try in the morning (program downloaded OK), but can you tell me what sort of file name I'll be looking for, please?

 

[SIW2]

They look like this, but since vssadmin cant find them , they might have got damaged and have weird names - who knows.

They will be pretty big and you can sort by size with disk explorer if I remember correctly, so not hard to find.



- - - Updated - - -

Or you could try zvsscopy - but not sure they will show up if vssadmin cant see them. Worth a try maybe

Shadow Copy Explorer - manage & search - Z-DBackup

Z-VSScopy can be use without limitations for 30 days.

After the end of the trial period Z-VSScopy will continue to run with limited capabilities.

 

[pellis777]

SIW2, UPDATE 27-9-21 Whlie I'm very grateful for your help, after using both Glary and Z-VSSCopy (each of which give, in at least one case, file names or SnapIDs that differ for what appear to be the same recent SRP file (date and time identical)) I think further progress is beyond my available time and motivation. (Marked as 'solved' because SIW2's help probably took me as far as I can go on this and I've reached a resolution, even if it's not what I was hoping.)

If I go to very early SRPs, I might just as well reinstall WIN7 with all the application reinstallations required, and if I use recent SRPs, they will include the problems I've had for the last year or so (mainly system freezing after playing with image files). Or it may be that I just need to expand RAM from 8GB to 16GB (as a friend suggested).

So I plan to delete all SRPs except the latest, and increase RAM, and if the problems persist, then reinstall WIN7 (if I can get hold of a genuine disk. I have recently downloaded an ISO file, but am not certain it's "OK". Maybe eBay will have original for sale.)

END OF UPDATE

Some progress finding some SRP dates (seen in WIN7 only) correspond to Win backups to D:, but can't tie in with Glary lists of files. Downloading Z-VSSCopy to see if that gives more detail.


Glary has exposed the SVI, exactly as you demonstrated above, but there are only about 16 (i.e. neither only the 6 recent SRPs nor only the 48 old ones) so it's hard to tell which are the (likely) SRPs.

Date Modified is little help as all but one of the files were modified very recently (too many to be only the ones Windows identifies as recent), and I don't think Glary can display a Date Created to match the creation dates displayed in Windows.

The paradox is that Windows appears to see the older SRPs and recognise the huge size on C: but doesn’t allow selective deletions, while s/w allowing selective deletions can’t see the older SRPs (unless Glary allows selective deletions, as it appears to do).

However, the total size of the system files is very close to the size Windows shows for all 54 SRPs. Could some SRPs have been merged, perhaps...?

I'll do some more work on analysing the files and let you know how it goes, but will be tied up for much of the next few days.

Many thanks for all your help so far. More to follow - P (SEE UPDATE ABOVE PLS)