XP Restore Points Missing

Whe I first installed XP I created a restore point. However, 6 months later it is not there and only 1 months restore points are available. Is there any way of keeping a restore point long than 1 month?

 

This MS Knowledge Base article lists the default time to live for restore points as 90 days, though various activities can remove points less than that (also listed inthe article).

This (other) MS Knowledge Base article tells you which registry values effect the System Restore behaviour. Among them is "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SystemRestore\RPLifeInterval" which is a DWORD value representing the Time to Live (in seconds) for system restore points. The KB article says that this value is safe to change, but as with any registry modification be sure that you know what you are doing.

 

Quoting from All About System Restore in WinXP:

For best results, a roll back should be performed immediately after problem is recognized. The older the restore point the more chance of creating additional problems such as dealing with application that were installed after the restore point being restored to.

http://bertk.mvps.org/

Very old restore points are useless & dangerous...System Restore is NOT a Drive Imaging Tool like Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image...

 

Very much so. And my thoughts.

Also I am getting bored and need something agrue about. LOL

And I find this board A GREAT place to do that.

After making any changes, adding or removing things System Restore should be shut down and restarted. Or at least a new Restore point made.

System Restore and other backups are not Set-and-forget items. They are only as good as they are kept up to date.

I am getting to the point now where I may just shutdown and restart SR before I make changes, That makes sure that I have a recent one. I know it takes a bit of time to do this. But it may also save time by not having older and usless, maybe trouble making old points hanging around.

Over and out for now. Gotta go refill an empty coffe cup.

BillyBob

 

The system restore capacity is limtied - you can set the space allowed in Control panel - once the approve space is eceeded old restore poitns ar dropped.

Do not use system restore for something you need more that a day. If you want to keep it you must do some kind of backup. I recommend Acronis True image with a daily schedule in the night hours. It is in my experience fail-safe except for hard ware problems.

 

BillyBob--So you want an argument, eh??

Those actions have two different end results. Shutting SR down will remove all prior restore points. They might be just the ones you need after "making any changes ". (But, of course, if you are sure you will never want/need the older restore points, then that is OK if a bit risky.)
Windows automatically makes a new RP every 24 hours (if the PC is on and idle).
Also I do not believe you should manually delete older RP's. RP's are cumulative and newer ones depend on the presence of the older ones. So it is all or nothing.
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial56.html

 

Does that require the machine to be left on for those 24 hours. I turn mine off at night and back on in the morning. Usually off from app 11PM to app 8AM.

I just checked and only have one RP that I made two days ago.

Am I missing a setting somewhere ?

Also could the way XP was installed have anything to do with this ? I have heard comments of both yes and no.

But either way, I myself like to MANUALLY check to be sure an RP is there before I do any major work.

BillyBob

 

LOL

I think Jim made my points

SR is primarily for the protection of the OS. But SR will monitor data files with following extensions, including user data http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/sr/sr/monitored_file_extensions.asp

Agree with onclejean that a better OS backup is a drive image. But unless someone wants to make an OS image every day, SR is, within it's limits, rather handy to have.

I assume you meant "than ". Why not?

Regards - Charles

 

BillyBob--I have Windows Defender running. I think that may disrupt the normal WinXP default behavior of creating a restore point every 24 hours since WD creates restore points (too many, I think).
But I believe Windows' normal behavior is every 24 hours. The PC does not have to be left on 24 hours, but the PC does have to be on for the RP to take place .
http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBK/tip5400/rh5412.htm

 

Restore Points

Forget about system restore points, they are useless and requires too much space in your hard drive.

If you want to protect your system use a Disk imaging software (the leader is Acronis True image at www.acronis.com )

creating a weekly full system image will protect you against any crash. your system will be restored completely in less than 30 minutes to the date the image was created.

Since i am using it I disabled system restore and don't use it at all

 

Useless to you

The size can be controlled. I usually keep the size at a point so that about a weeks worth of SR points are available. I usually create drive images (have two OS's) of the OS partitions once a week.

Regards - Charles

 

My Two Cents.

Defender adds restore points every time I turn around, and that's great!!!

It has saved my bacon quite a number of times. loonychoons

 

I am liking this. I am getting what I asked for.

But I still maintain my thoughts about If I make changes and/or repairs of any kind WHY ?? do I want old backups of any form hanging around ? Even drive images etc.

I am not sure but I beleive I mentioned before that I had created problesm for myself. If not then here it is,

I took time to clean the system of old no longer used software. Moved a couple of things from one drive to another. Updated a couple of things iincluding some windows updates I believe.

Without even thinking I used an older restore point. OUCH !!! Bad language time. It even brought my Wife in from the kitchen to see what was going on.

Again. I do not think SR is a set and forget item. I believe ( believe-it-or-not-by Ripley ) that is must be kept up to date along with the system.

Ya' all have a nice day.
BillyBob ( or is it Billyboob )

 

Hi BillBob,

Short answer is yes. You never know if you have to go back to a "old" backup because a problem shows up not noticed and the latest backup is after that problem, in another words, incorporates the problem. How many old backups to keep is a matter of judgement.

Sure, and keeping "old" backups around and keeping up to date is not mutually exclusive.

Regards - Charles

 

I am liking this more and more.

OK. In my case I have drives C:-H:. I only have SR set on C:

Now if today I add/remove something on E: It will ( or may/should be ) of course added to or removed from the registry.

Also. After an uninstall I usually go to the dirve where it was installed and make sure it is gone. Sometimes I may need to use something like PowerDesk to remove the folder.

After that I usually run RegSeeker to clean up the reg. I have found it amazing how much stuff may remain in the reg after an uninstall.

I do wait a day or two ( lesson learned the hard way ) to make sure all is going to be OK. If all does turn out that all is well then why do I want the backup from before removing the software ? Because it will only put all of the removed/useless stuff back in again.

So. My bottom line is.
" I do not believe SR is a " one size fits all " item. I think it has to be set and used according to the individual system. You make changes. It may well need to be changed to suit.

BillyBob

 

System Restore

You are still arguing and giving too much importance to a System restore that, in fact, it does not deserve it.

System restore only restores a very partial and limited amou nt of settings, etc and many times it has to RENAME a bunch of folders (example :folder such and such (2), etc.. so you end with duplicate folders each time you use the System restore.
Also SR WILL NOT uninstall software completely (if you use SR after a bad installation of a new software), it will only remove the most imporytant folders or entries and will leave the rest as "ghost files ". In other words, SR is only a "band aid" and most experts will not recommend usig or depending on it to recover from bad crashes.

The Disk Imaging is still the supreme option for any type of system malfunction or botched software installations. Another handy application is ShadowSurfer which creates a ghost or virtual copy of your system where you can surf the bad websites or install several software for trial to find out if they are good or not and no matter how many viruses, troyans, malware you get surfing the net or any botched software installations, after you close the virtual copy of your system (shadowmode) everything is gone, Kaput and your system remains intact.

With a Digital Image backup you can also explore previous images and recover any file or picture that you accidentally deleted from the trash bin without the need of System Restore to go back and leave you with a bunch of duplicate folders in the proccess.

Forget about System Restore, it is not worth all this publicity you are giving it and do yourselves a big favor and buy Acronis True Image and go to sleep assured that your system is completely protected against any disaster.

 

Hi mazaprin,

I don't know who you're addressing - me, BillyBob, or Lenny, or all of us

A number of points:

Not all Windows problems - probably the majority, need a sledgehammer (a drive image restore) to fix; there are gradiations of problems. A user or a 3rd party app messed up their settings for example. Plenty of examples, not going to list them - its endless. For us here at the BBS, SR is one of the tools that we know XP has and a great many times has solved a user's problems.

The vast majority of users don't and probably never will have drive imaging, so what they are left with is SR, which for relatively minor problems does the job. Far better than with previous OSes where there was nothing. BTW, Vista will come with a built in restore app far more effective than XP's.

One final point, whether Acronis is the best is a matter of opinion - glad you like it, but as in any software, its not magic and has its problems.

Official Acronis Support Forum

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/index.php

Regards - Charles