System Restore doesn’t work in Windows XP | Ask Jack

July 29, 2010 by admin
Filed under Computers

Arthur Whitemore says System Restore will create a restore point on his PC running Windows XP, but it will only keep the latest restore point. System Restore used to work OK, but now it only creates a restore point for the current day. A new one is created the next day, but the previous day's restore point is gone. My C drive has 12.3GB of free space and system restore is set at 12% of disk space. Arthur Whitemore System Restore mainly keeps track of changes made to your PC, including the Registry, so that you can go back to an earlier state if you run into a problem. You can see if there are earlier restore points because the calendar dates show up in bold. If you can't see any, try restarting your PC in Safe Mode. This loads a sort of "bare bones" Windows, which might not include the program that is stopping System Restore from working. This could be a virus or an anti-virus program. It's not too surprising if an anti-virus program tries to prevent changes to system files. If System Restore does work correctly in Safe Mode, then your next challenge will be to find out what's stopping it. Running MBAM ( Malwarebytes Anti-Malware ) would be a good start. If it's neither a virus nor an anti-virus program, you could try eliminating start-up programs. While you can use Windows' msconfig for this, AnVir Task Manager Free is worth a go. Of course, the most common reason for System Restore to stop working is that you have run out of disk space. There is a Microsoft Support page for this: System Restore "restore points" are missing or deleted . There's also a more useful document: Troubleshooting steps for issues when you try to use the System Restore tool in Windows XP . System Restore typically takes up 200MB to 400MB on home PCs, so you should have enough space (12% of 12.3GB is roughly 1.5GB). However, you can look to see how much space it is taking up. To do this, you must be able to see hidden files and folders.