System Protection Restore Points - Delete

How to Delete System Protection Restore Points in Windows 7 and Windows 8​

   Information

This will show you how to delete all, all but the most recent, or individual System Protection restore points for a selected hard disk in Windows 7 and Windows 8.

System Restore isn't available for Windows RT.

   Warning

If you delete all of the restore points, then you cannot restore the disk until System Protection is on and a restore point is created for the hard disk again.

It has been reported that some 3rd party disk defragmentation programs could also delete your restore points when used.

OPTION ONE

Use System Protection Properties to Delete Restore Points

:warn:WARNING: This will delete all restore points (system settings and previous versions of files) for the selected hard disk.
1. Open the Control Panel (icons view) in Windows 7 or Windows 8, and click/tap on the System icon.

2. In the left side of System, click/tap on the System Protection link. (See screenshot below)

3. If prompted by UAC, then click/tap on Yes.

4. Close the System window. (See screenshot below)

5. Click/tap on the available hard disk drive or partition, that you want to delete the System Protection restore points for, to select it. (See screenshot below step 6)
NOTE: Windows should be the C: disk with (System). System Protection will need to be turned on for the selected disk to be able to delete the restore points.

6. Click/tap on the Configure button. (See screenshot below)

7. Click/tap on the Delete button. (See screenshot below)

8. Click/tap on the Continue button to confirm the deletion. (See screenshot below)

9. Click/tap on Close in the success prompt. (See screenshot below)

10. Click/tap on OK. (See screenshot below step 7)

11. Click/tap on OK. (See screenshot below step 6)

OPTION TWO

Use Disk Cleanup to Delete Restore Points

NOTE: This will help free up more disk space for the selected hard disk by removing all but the most recent restore point. This will also include deleting shadow copies (Previous Versions) that were created with a deleted restore point.
1. Press the Windows + R keys to open the Run dialog, type cleanmgr, and press Enter.

2. Select the hard disk you want to use Disk Cleanup on, and click/tap on OK. (See screenshot below)
NOTE: You will not see this window unless you have more than one drive or partition on your computer.

3. You will now see this scanning screenshot below for a few seconds.

4. Click/tap on the Clean up system files button. (See screenshot below)

5. If prompted by UAC, then click/tap on Yes.

6. Select the hard disk you want to use Disk Cleanup on, and click/tap on OK. (See screenshot below step 2)
NOTE: You will not see this window unless you have more than one drive or partition on your computer.

7. Click/tap on the More Options tab, and click/tap on the Clean up button under the System Restore and Shadow Copies section. (See screenshot below)

8. Click/tap on the Delete button in the confirm deletion window. (See screenshot below)

9. Close the Disk Cleanup window. (See screenshot below step 7)
WARNING: Do not click on OK unless you wanted to delete the checked files in the Disk Cleanup tab.

OPTION THREE

Use CCleaner to Delete Individual Restore Points

1. If you have not already, download and install the free program CCleaner and run it.

2. In CCleaner, click on the Tools icon, System Restore button, then select the restore points that you wish to delete and click on Remove. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: You can press and hold the CTRL key while clicking on the restore points to be able to select random restore points.

3. Click on OK to confirm deleting them. (see screenshot below)

4. When finished, close CCleaner. The selected restore points have been deleted.

OPTION FOUR

Use "System Restore Explorer" to Delete Individual Restore Points

   Note

You could also use the System Restore Explorer program to mount specific restore points to be able to browse and copy individual files and folders from a mounted restore point back into Windows without having to use Previous Versions or to do a full System Restore.

For more on this, see:
How to Extract Files and Folders from System Restore Points in Windows 7 and Vista

1. If you have not already, download and install the free program System Restore Explorer and run it.

2. In System Restore Explorer, select a specific restore point that you would like to delete, and click on the Delete button. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: If displayed, uncheck the Hide restore points created in last 5 days box to see all restore points.




3. Click on Yes to confirm the deletion. (see screenshot below)

4. When finished, close System Restore Explorer. The selected restore points have been deleted.

OPTION FIVE

Use "Manage Windows Backup disk space" to Delete System Image Restore Points

   Note

This option is good to delete the System Image Restore Point "Backup" type restore points like below.

1. Use step 5 in OPTION ONE of the tutorial below to select the Keep only the latest system image and minimum space used by backup option, and click/tap on OK.
How to Delete Windows 7 User Data and System Image Backup Files







That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

---

• How to Change the System Protection Disk Space Usage in Window 7
• How to Turn System Protection On or Off in Windows 7
• How to Make a "Create System Restore Point" Shortcut in XP, Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8
• How to Add "Create Restore Point" to Context Menu in XP, Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8
• How to Create a System Restore Point in Windows 7
• How to Do a System Restore in Windows 7
• How to Create a Windows 7 System Protection Properties Shortcut
• How to Automatically Create A System Restore Point at Startup
• How to Enable or Disable Windows 7 System Restore Configuration
• How to Enable or Disable Windows 7 System Restore
• How to Free Up and Recover Hard Drive Space in Windows 7
• How to Stop System Restore Points from being Deleted in Vista and Windows 7 when Dual Booting with XP
• How to Delete Shadow Copies in Vista and Windows 7
• How to Extract Files and Folders from System Restore Points in Windows 7 and Vista
• How to Use File History Cleanup to Delete Older Versions of Files in Windows 8

 

[Brink]

Hello Carmine,

Do you have UAC turned off or logged into the built-in Administrator account? If so, that may be why the Clean up system files button is missing to elevate (run as administrator) Disk Cleanup.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[pacinitaly]

UAC is off \\\



thanks Shawn

I'll leave it be

 

[Brink]

Okey doke.

 

[smoothchat]

Any solution yet?

I have the same issue. I diligently created several system images as I was building the machine, now they are redundant and I have deleted the images, however the references remain in System Restore. Has anyone discovered how to remove the redundant entries?

Update:
I created another backup and then deleted all backups via the manage space option in the backup and restore dialog and most of my entries were removed. I had to create and delete on every drive I had previously created a backup on in order clear the list completely.

 

[chriswchrisw]

Smootchat, Marsmimar.....I got the same problem, did you ever find a good solution?

 

[smoothchat]

Hello
chriswchrisw,

Like I said above, I created another backup and then deleted all backups via the manage space option in the backup and restore dialog and most of my entries were removed. I then had to create and delete on every destination drive I had previously created a backup to, in order clear the list completely.

I now use Macrium reflect. Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

It does an excellent job, it's flexible and it's free. Used it to restore several times now as I tweak my system.

 

[chriswchrisw]

smoothchat...OK, thanks. I'm checking out Macrium.

 

[Barefoot]

Brink, do you know how removing individual restore points affects the system? For example, I've been trying to troubleshoot random AHCI controller errors, so I increased the amount of storage available for system restore so I can restore all the way back to fresh. I boot to Acronis True Image and save images anyway, but I thought I'd try system restore also. A recent install of HDTune Pro has been crashing so I used a system restore point created immediately before installing HDTune Pro. There were a couple restore points created after installing HDTune Pro.

1. Can I delete those restore points created after installing HDTune Pro?

2. Am I correct that they are no longer useful?

 

[Brink]

Hello Barefoot,

Deleting the individual restore points as described in Method Three will have no affect on the system other than you no longer being able to use it anymore to restore back to that date and time.

It's really up to you to decide if the restore point contained anything useful or not though. If you have no plans on restoring back to that date, then I suppose it'll be fine to delete if you like.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[P1nkfloyd]

Hi I'm new here,,, I have the problem of NOT being able to delete old restore points, (which I have done before) I tried various things and can report that in System Protection it states that system restore has been disabled by Group Policy.
and I can't seem to turn it on. A restore point of today was available but failed. I am not on a network but have recently installed a Bluetooth dongle, and accessed my web site host via Filezilla ftp program.
My worries are twofold, decreasing disc space and no Restore Points. Any advice on how to turn SR back on and override Group policy would be much appreciated.

 

[whs]

If I want to delete my shadows, I use
Vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=300MB.
Then I start anew.

 

[Brink]

Hello P1inkfloyd, and welcome to Seven Forums.

In addition, if you are logged in as an administrator, then you might see of OPTION ONE will be able to enable System Restore for you to then be able to delete restore points and change the disk usage of it.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/81500-system-restore-enable-disable.html

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[P1nkfloyd]

Unable to Delete/Create Restore Points because of a Group Policy

Hi Brink, Thanks for answering my question.

My problem, again was that I could not delete my Restore Points or Configure Restore Points because of a Group Policy being in place and quoted within System Properties.

The following removed the Group Policy and enabled me to a) delete restore points as well as re-enabling me to create Restore Points.

1. Click Start, Run and type regedit.exe and press Enter
2. Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Policies \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ SystemRestore
In the right-pane:
Delete the value DisableConfig
Delete the value DisableSR
3. Exit the Registry Editor.

In Windowsl, you can accomplish the above using Group Policy Editor as well.

1. Click Start, Run and type GPEDIT.MSC
2. Navigate to this path:
-> Computer Configuration
--> Administrative Templates
---> System
----> System Restore
3. Set Turn off System Restore to Not Configured
4. Set Turn off Configuration to Not Configured

from Gurpreet Singh J.

Robert

 

[Brink]

Robert,

I'm happy to hear that you got it sorted. The tutorials below will do that automaticall for others with the same issue.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/81500-system-restore-enable-disable.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/81499-system-restore-configuration-enable-disable.html

 

[squirtmph]

Thank you for all fine Image!!

 

[erewhon]

Thanks for that - I used the CC Cleaner method. And thanks for the reg fix that makes 8's file system usable.

 

[too]

Is there a way of changing the recovery file to an external hd or make a back up of windows to an external hd without all the installed applications?
I use my OS on an SSD and everything else is on a HD, but the way I know if something happens I still have to reinstall everything.
Thank you.

 

[Brink]

Hello too,

For that, it would be best to create a system image with both drives selected and save it to where you like.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/663-backup-complete-computer-create-image-backup.html

 

[betaupsilon]

SYS RESTORE EXPLORER

Hi everyone,
I did not take the time to read all of the numerous pages of responses to this tutorial, but I stumbled onto a problem with OPTION #4 with SYSTEM RESTORE EXPLORER that may have been experienced by someone else other than myself.

I have a dual boot system on a single hard drive. Each system has its own separate partition obviously. I used SYSTEM RESTORE EXPLORER to delete individual restore points on one system of the dual boot system. It turns out that SYSTEM RESTORE EXPLORER not only deleted the individual restore points that I chose, but deleted ALL of the restore points on the other system of my dual boot system.

I repeated the experiment without deleting individual restore points. Simply launching SYSTEM RESTORE EXPLORER on one system will result in the deletion of ALL restore points on the other system.

Has anyone seen this behavior? If so is there a workaround?

HOPING for some INSIGHT!

 

[betaupsilon]

Hi everyone,
I did not take the time to read all of the numerous pages of responses to this tutorial, but I stumbled onto a problem with OPTION #4 with SYSTEM RESTORE EXPLORER that may have been experienced by someone else other than myself.

I have a dual boot system on a single hard drive. Each system has its own separate partition obviously. I used SYSTEM RESTORE EXPLORER to delete individual restore points on one system of the dual boot system. It turns out that SYSTEM RESTORE EXPLORER not only deleted the individual restore points that I chose, but deleted ALL of the restore points on the other system of my dual boot system.

I repeated the experiment without deleting individual restore points. Simply launching SYSTEM RESTORE EXPLORER on one system will result in the deletion of ALL restore points on the other system.

Has anyone seen this behavior? If so is there a workaround?

HOPING for some INSIGHT!

Just a NOTE:
You can reproduce this behavior on own your own machine if you have another system partition existing on the same HARD drive.. If so, install some innocuous application & attempt to delete it with SYSTEM RESTORE EXPLORER. You will find that the restore points on your OTHER SYSTEM are wiped out!

What can be done about this?