Please Help - System Restore cannot find any Restore Points?

[No expert]

Hi there,

My Windows 7 Home (64bit), Dell 1721 Inspiron has just crashed. I cannot enter Windows in Safe Mode.

I can however access the System Recovery page but it says that it cannot find any restore points. The message is:

"To use System Restore, you must specify which Windows installation to restore.
Restart this computer, select an operating system, and then select System Restore".


The issue is actually as described here:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/68942-sata-drivers-load-windows-recovery-options.html, i.e. no Operating Systems are being shown.

I know the machine creates regular Restore Points; I had even checked this in Task Scheduler in the past and all was working fine.

In order to show the Operating Systems it is requesting that the hard disk drivers are installed.

I've downloaded the AMD SATA drivers from here: DriverPack Mass Storage 10.03 for Windows Vista (x64) | DriverPacks.net

and when I click "Load Drivers" then it says "Adding Drivers..." and then it goes back to the same screen, i.e. the first screen here: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/68942-sata-drivers-load-windows-recovery-options.html

So to summarise, I know there are restore points, but I cannot access them.

I'm really stuck so any ideas are appreciated.

Thanks

 

[zigzag3143]

Hi there,

My Windows 7 Home (64bit), Dell 1721 Inspiron has just crashed. I cannot enter Windows in Safe Mode.

I can however access the System Recovery page but it says that it cannot find any restore points. The message is:

"To use System Restore, you must specify which Windows installation to restore.
Restart this computer, select an operating system, and then select System Restore".


The issue is actually as described here:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/68942-sata-drivers-load-windows-recovery-options.html, i.e. no Operating Systems are being shown.

I know the machine creates regular Restore Points; I had even checked this in Task Scheduler in the past and all was working fine.

In order to show the Operating Systems it is requesting that the hard disk drivers are installed.

I've downloaded the AMD SATA drivers from here: DriverPack Mass Storage 10.03 for Windows Vista (x64) | DriverPacks.net

and when I click "Load Drivers" then it says "Adding Drivers..." and then it goes back to the same screen, i.e. the first screen here: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/68942-sata-drivers-load-windows-recovery-options.html

So to summarise, I know there are restore points, but I cannot access them.

I'm really stuck so any ideas are appreciated.

Thanks

If I am not mistaken the message is not saying there are no restore points, it is saying you must select which windows OS you want to restore. DId it come with another OS on it (ie vista) and then was upgraded to win7?

 

[No expert]

Apologies for missing that information from my original post. The sequence is as follows:

(1) Laptop was preloaded with Windows Vista Home 32bit
(2) I then upgraded to Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit
(3) I then did a "clean install" of Windows 7 Home 64bit.

I should also say that that I can still see the D: "recovery" drive that I think Dell creates by default.

Many thanks

 

[SIW2]

You can see one partition , but not the others?

I presume that is when you are browsing the load driver window.

What does diskpart say?

At a command promt, type:

Diskpart

(then press enter )

lis vol

(then press enter - see what it lists)

exi

 

[No expert]

Hi and thanks for all your replies.

Windows 7 has now magically started again (I did not do anything different).

I now have a different question: looking at the Task Scheduler, I can see a number of successful Restore Points being created (i.e. "Task Completed").

However, when I click on System Restore I can only see the latest Restore Point that was created (Even if I tick the "show more restore points tickbox").

I should also say that I have not run Disk Cleanup recently (that would remove older Restore Points).

Also, looking at the Disk Space Usage, the current usage for System Protection is 4.11GB from a max of 6.22GB. So there are some older restore points, but I cannot see them.

Any ideas welcome.