Win 7 Deletes System Restore Points at Reboot
Users have noticed that Windows 7 will delete system restore points after installing applications/drivers and then rebooting.
Slashdot points the way to an annoying bug in Windows 7 that apparently will delete restore points--without prior warning--when the system reboots. The Slashdot post echos what many consumers are reporting on an answers.microsoft.com forum thread found here. Microsoft has addressed the issue with a manual workaround, however there's no official patch, and many users are reporting that the simply fix doesn't work.
In a nutshell, affected users install an application or driver that (seemingly) requires the need to reboot. During the process, the system hangs at the "Starting Windows" screen, and the hard drive remains active. It's believed at this point that the OS is deleting the current system restore points.
"Unfortunately I only found this out when Windows barfed at a USB dongle and I wanted to restore the system to an earlier state," an anonymous writer states. "This is an extraordinarily bad bug, which I suspect most Windows 7 users won't realize is affecting them until it's too late." Many who are complaining about the system restore bug have discovered the issue on clean re-installs of the OS.
One user claims to have fixed the problem using Vssadmin in the command prompt and changing the allocation size on the target hard drive. Microsoft support takes a longer route using a 2-method process, requiring Win7 users to check for the COM+ Event System and to locate DGIVecp.
If you've recently experienced this problem, head to this forum post for both the user and Microsoft fixes.
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good to know
Huh. This really stinks.
If it flushed all restore points except for the last one, that would be understandable, but this is silly.
Meanwhile at Redmond... :\
I shut off System Restore and just back up regularily for the performance boost ^.^
Can't remember the last time I used system restore.
Blah blah blah!!!! More microcrap problems!!!!!!!!!!!
Hmm, I'm pretty sure Vista doesn't do this...guess I'll be holding off on 7 until SP2 comes out.
I always turn off the Virus replication system, er... I mean System Restore...
I wish that vista would do this. Every time when I have to clean up restore points I end up freeing 60-100gb!
Deleting system restore points? I'm willing to bet this is a result of people f-ing with system settings to reduce the space taken up by those restore points in the first place. Didn't Vista, by default, consume massive amounts of diskspace for restores points, and didn't Tom's post an article about working around that and all the other Vista stupidity they fixed in Win 7?
Not saying this isn't a problem, I'm just hoping its not a generic bug that affects everybody. And yes, I read that it supposedly happens on clean-installs, but I don't trust what anyone says. "Why yes, this is a clean install from the bootstrapped CD I created with a bunch of OS tweaks."
My problem seems to be with the "Critical Update" being installed at Shut Down, and then when I reboot the computer it freezes after about 60 seconds. I use System Restore to go back to the way things were before the critical update and it fixes the problem, but then it tells me again "OMG You need this critical update!"
So far the only thing good about Win 7 is during installation you can use RAID drivers from a flash drive. Everything else appears to be aesthetic. It's not worth the price so far.
acronis trueimage
I don't use restore points, its just a hiding ground for bugs. I still like using ghost to make backup images.
I suppose it's better to delete the System restore points than it is to delete the Systems data eh?
For years, every time I tried to use a restore point the system would try to go back but would always report a 'Failure to restore to previous settings'. Now I have 3 physical HDD's in use. One for System, one for my files and applications installs, and a final drive for my downloads.
If my systems gets buggy I just copy my current browser settings along with Outlook and reinstall. OK, it takes 6-8 hours to get it all back and updated but there is something very calming about a clean install.
This is a bummer. System restore is one of the better windows vista/7 features. This bug is definitely did not affect me when I was on vista; it's a new w7 bug.
I shut off System Restore and just back up regularily for the performance boost ^.^
You do not understand how system restore works if you think you gained any performance boost at all (beyond the trivial drive space saved...which is then automatically freed if needed anyway).
Why do people always think they can "tweak" their OS better than the people that actually wrote it?
system restore is kind of useless/pointless because virus is the usual cause of system meltdowns.....
system restore is unbelievably useful. Even in a full non-boot situation you can just go to system volume information and grab an intact copy of your registry. I've had it save my butt about half a dozen times since the XP days and never once was the problem virus related.
I learned this issue out the other day when I updated my wife's computer... the driver I installed produced a blue screen and then when I attempted to restore all my restore points were gone!
This is why the C: drive stores Windows 7 and my games, while another hard drive stores family photos, music, and other files I don't want to lose.
You mean that people who wrote the OS that needs a patch every Tuesday?Or the OS that isn't stable until SP2 at least?
I believe you'll find Windows 7 sp0 is stable.
[citation]Or maybe you mean the people who wrote the OS that could be easily affected by virii like Conficker?[/citation]
Sorry but if you used that "patch tuesday" you were just griping about then you wouldn't be vulnerable.
[citation]A clean install of Windows is an OS waiting, asking to be tweaked and YES, IMPROVED![/citation]
..and yet you think that removing a feature that costs essentially nothing in terms of performance but drastically reduces supportability would be an improvement?
Sorry but the Windows developers really do know more than you. Really.
I disable system restore as soon as I complete any fresh installation. I hate it. In the unlikely event of the OS getting screwed I'll just do a fresh install. No point in dragging a wounded horse, you have to shoot it, this is the same.
If the system reboots properly and the restore point is shredded... what makes you think that the restore point is worth keeping!!! The point is to be able to undo the last change you made to get the system running again. Guess what, if you reboot normally the system is running fine and keeping the restore point is therefore useless! If your system crashes after rebooting and deleting the restore point, you f*ed up something ELSE and the restore point isn't what you need to use to fix it. Try safe mode for crying out loud.
"many users are reporting that the simply fix doesn't work."
to
"many users are reporting that the simple fix doesn't work."
Why do people always think they can "tweak" their OS better than the people that actually wrote it? Sorry but the Windows developers really do know more than you. Really.
I thought this was obvious, but operating systems are designed for many different types of users, all of whom have different levels of experience with computers. Just because the system came pre-installed with a particular piece of software or has a certain feature "on" by default doesn't mean it's useful to all users.
At the same time, people who change their home page to something they regularly visit, or turn-off automatic backups, or increase the size of the fonts/icons, or change it so there is no need to double-click... they're not claiming to know more about software than the programmers; they just know what they want.
I thought this was obvious, but operating systems are designed for many different types of users, all of whom have different levels of experience with computers. Just because the system came pre-installed with a particular piece of software or has a certain feature "on" by default doesn't mean it's useful to all users.At the same time, people who change their home page to something they regularly visit, or turn-off automatic backups, or increase the size of the fonts/icons, or change it so there is no need to double-click... they're not claiming to know more about software than the programmers; they just know what they want.
Tweak it however you want. Just don't claim that tweaks like turning off system restore improve performance. That just illustrates that you do not understand how system restore works.
I shut off System Restore and just back up regularily for the performance boost ^.^
Likewise. Scunia's bootable backup option always superior as it A) creates full disk image, boot partition included B) operated from outside the booted OS environment, so you aren't backing up bits that are loaded into memory/being altered and C) can create a dedicated back-up partition that is not accessible by other OSes, so they can never mess with your backups, esp if they are sitting on a second drive.
All that aside though, considering the level of knowlege of computer uses these days (low to none), this is bad since folk won't know aforementioned best practices. On the other hand, if they don't know how to properly make back-ups, they probably don't know how to do restores either (since A comes before B).
"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."
This is why you use a 3rd party backup tool. I see this affecting the average joe user, but if you are a power user then you should be using something different.
Me? Commvault and Acronis Home are good solutions (for their respective markets). I mean, who doesn't want to be able to create a clone of their PC that is hardware independant?
No problem. I do full backups and shut off system-restore anyway.
)
I don't know how much of a story there is here..
One forum post with, what, maybe 10 posts in it?
The good news is because it is Microsoft this will be fixed very quickly. And I mean VERY quickly. If it were Apple you would probably wait a good 2 weeks or more.