Restore Points Vanished

I just went to do a system restore for minor bugginess and found all my restore points gone. May is empty, and no previous months are available.

System Restore settings are at maximum and show that it should be working, and usually I have a system checkpoint almost every day.

But like I said, now they're all gone. Scary.

My computer is left on 24 hours a day. The only scheduled task I have is for Norton AV once a week, and that's working fine.

Any ideas how to fix this problem?

Thanks.

 

Try setting up a sample system restore point to see if it takes.
Also check to see in your services if the service is turned on

either run > services.msc or in the control panel
I know that it is time related - that is if the computer is turned off for an extended period the points are often wiped out ( like a trash can)

 

If that does not work try:

In system restore, click System Restore settings. Check Turn off system restore on all drives click apply, OK (answer yes to any warning messages). Close System restore, restart your PC. Go back into system restore settings and uncheck that box. A new restore point should be created. After a while see if you can set another one manually.

Turning it off, restarting, then turning it back on in this way often cures malfunctions. But note that turning off system restore does delete all restore points. But since you've lost those anyway...

 

Thanks, everyone!

Here's where I'm at with this problem now. All my previous restore points and system checkpoints are still gone. My services are running fine. But I created a "test" restore point yesterday after I noticed the problem, and it's still there today.

The only potential problem I can see is that my E drive (partition) only has 1.5 GB (out of 10 GB) of free space left. But I doubt that would cause a "low disk space" problem and force System Restore to delete all restore points. And besides, E has been 85% full like that for many months, and until yesterday System Restore was still giving me daily system checkpoints anyway.

But I'd like to free up some space on E anyway. I've got a 1.5 GB pagefile.sys on E, created 10/6/2006. I have no idea what that is, but can I delete it?

Other than that, the only thing I can try from what you all have suggested is to turn off System Restore, shut down the machine, boot up again and then re-enable System Restore.

But here's another question: If this doesn't work to restart the creation of daily system checkpoints, can I use task scheduler in some way to do that?

 

Ah yes, now I remember. Last October I sought advice here on improving virtual memory and I remember changing the swap file from C to E because some thought it would be more efficient. But then after more discussion, I moved it back to C, which now has a current swapfile the same size as the one on E.

So I assume I can just delete the pagefile.sys on E?

By the way, my current C swapfile is set to 1536-3072 (I have 1 GB RAM). Are you recommending that I change that to a fixed size of 1536?

Meanwhile, I'll let you know if System Restore starts generating daily system checkpoints again.

Thanks again.

 

Bingo! Thanks, once again, for great advice and pointers, Pete. I don't know how many times you've helped me over the years -- I've lost count -- but I clearly owe you a beer (at least!) if you're ever in Portland.

 

Pete, it looks like I'm still having problems -- and weird ones at that!

As I noted, I turned System Restore off and then on again on Wednesday the 16th. I also manually created a couple of restore points prior to running Ad-Aware and Spybot and Norton AV to make sure I had no viruses or anything.

By Friday the 18th (today), though, I still was not generating any automatic system checkpoints as I had been doing previously before all these problems started.

So I downloaded that Doug Knox SysRestorePoint program and had it create an "Automatic Restore Point."

Unfortunately, when it did that it also apparently deleted all the restore points I had created on the 16th. So obviously I'm not going to use that program anymore.

Any idea what the heck is going on here? Why did the SysRestorePoint program delete my previous restore points when generating one of its own?

And why is System Restore still not generating automatic system checkpoints on its own even though my PC is on 24 hours a day -- and even though I used to generate these until about a week ago?

I'm getting a little nervous here. Thanks for any advice you can offer.

 

Now that REALLY makes me nervous.

But I trust you, so I'll try to reinstall Sys Restore Monday morning when I get back to the office.

Thanks for responding so quickly. Talk to you Monday.

 

Okay, Pete, I'm about to reinstall System Restore. But one element of the instructions is confusing to me -- i.e., what is "slipstreamed Windows XP "?

 

Hi Dave,

Answer to your Slipstreaming question:
http://www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsXP/winxp-sp2-bootcd.html

Some questions:

Is the E partition being monitored by SR? If so, disable it.

Have you updated/installed any background software such as a 3rd party defragger? If so, disable it. If fact, it might help to pin this down to disable as many background processes as possible - aside from any security apps.

You had the same issue back late last year as well - never did find out what that was about.

Regards - Charles

 

But I don't need to do slipstreaming, whatever that is, do I?

All I need to do is locate the SR.INF file and click install, correct?

By the way, I just noticed that the restore points I had for May 18th have all just disappeared. So it looks like System Restore is not keeping them longer than a couple of days, even though I've got plenty of room on my hard drives and System Redstore settings are all set to the maximum monitoring space.

Also, I have only two programs that load at startup -- Norton Antivirus and Zone Alarm. So I don't think I've got any background processes that could be interfering. And none that are new -- everything is the same as it's been for months.

Except for the fact that suddenly System Restore is deleting its restore points for no reason.

Bummer.

 

Okay, new info:

I just checked my event logs, and found a notice on several dates stating that System Restore was suspended due to insufficient space on the system drive, and that it would resume once 200 MB or more of space was made available. Then on subsequent days, a new notice would state that System Restore had resumed again because more space was made available on the system drive.

It gives a weird set of numbers after "volume ", so I'm not sure which drive they're talking about, but I've got plenty of space on all drives (or partitions). On C, I've got 22.3 GB free space, on D 7.49 GB of free space, on E 2.74 GB of free space, and on F 8.77 GB of free space.

Obviously, the system is telling System Restore that the system drive is out of space when it's not. And that's apparently causing all my restore points to be deleted.

Any ideas why this is happening, or what to do here?

 

You're not saying specifically, and I want to make sure - is C the only partition being monitored?

If Not:

From what I remember, any space problems on any partition will affect SR the way you report from the Event Viewer. Max space taken by SR is 12% of the partition.

Only the System partition (C) should be monitored by SR, no other partition should be, SR is a way to backup XP's critical system files - the registry - executes such as what's in the Program Files folder, not a backup mechanism for user data, for that you should be using regular backup techniques, not SR.

If you disable all SR monitoring on all non C partitions, I suspect your problem will go away.

Regards - Charles