Windows 10 deleting restore points for unknown reasons

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Here’s a puzzler, from RK: I have mentioned this in some of my questions on Askwoody.com, and don’t understand why this is happening.   I am atta
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I hadn’t noticed it before, but like you I can confirm now having only a VERY limited set of restore points on my Win 10 test setup. This setup started with one the very first pre-release builds. My restore points at this time only go back less than a month, to April 20!

I have certainly not purged any on my own, and like you I had increased my available storage.

http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win10/10586/MyRestorePoints.png

http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win10/10586/MyRestoreSettings.png

Wow, it looks like ANOTHER sucky thing Microsoft has done to make Windows 10 worse. Now without an external backup one can’t even rely on being able to “go back” if not right on top of new things having gone wrong.

I suspect that doing occasional System Image backups is what’s necessary to make this behavior moot. Backups are always a good idea anyway, and a scheduled System Image backup is actually quite painless (assuming you leave the computer on and an external USB drive plugged-in).

-Noel

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Noel,

I am not sure if your report makes me feel better or worse. With your experiencing it, I know my Win 10 system does not have a fluke or set of circumstances that can be fixed.

When Win 10 began tormenting me last summer to update my Win 7 and downloaded the evil KB3035583 and corrupted my taskmanager among other things and I had to wipe the computer, I got in the habit of keeping notes of everything I did and hid. It is also something I do in my laboratory for my research, so not much of a stretch. When I got forced into Win 10 due to my fan burn out, I recorded everything I did on Win 10 because I disabled a lot of things that will snoop, or steal wifi bandwidth or give away my contacts, etc. I recorded all the restore points I created when I changed something and every update hidden, or installed and when and how.

I think to wipe out our initial restore points is unconscionable. I have no desire to reset my system if I need to go back more than a month.

In fact, I’d say at least 10-12 restore points are gone. There was even one I made before installation of your ConfigAutoUpdate program and that was removed by windows almost immediately. Then on 5/1 and that has been gone for about a week.

I wonder if system image restore points will be deleted. It looks as if my first one is still there.

Noel, did it wipe out any of your system image restore points?

Is it possible to set up the Windows system imaging software from win 7 to run on a regular basis, or do you need to use a third party one? If so what is a good one?

The problem with system images on Win 10 is that each image takes up so many GB–something like 40-47 each if I remember what my two used. I haven’t kept anything of import on this Win 10 because I haven’t trusted it since my initial restore point disappeared within 4 days of creation. I didn’t even have three total restore points then. If you have to do system images often one will fill up a 1TB or 2TB hard drive really quickly. That is where system restore would be useful so you can use them between system images.

Is there anyway to put restore points on an external drive, rather than leave them on the computer hard drive for MS to wipe them out, never to see them again?

Thanks

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I am not a user of System Restore and have never been a fan of it. I always disable it among first things when setting up a new system. For some people is working though and working well.
System Protection under System Properties has settings to manage the disk space allocated. Increasing that space may be the answer.
Otherwise, other technologies built-in Windows may be more reliable, like Back up and Restore (Windows 7) and File History.

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Volumeshadow copy blocks are oddly sized and don’t defragment well, lots of restore points on a slow computer can cause some minor performace loss.

Solution A:
Fix Volumeshadow copy block sizes (or make defrag work better with them)

Solution B:
No-one uses system restore anymore since we removed most of the links to it (Win8), criple this feature (quick and easy) it will make windows 10 look faster, we need it to look faster for better marketing.

(I guess this confirms solution B was chosen)

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How much free space is there on the disk with the restore-points in general?

AFAIK Windows is deleting old restore points when the amount of free space reaches a critical level, at least since Win 7.

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I think System Restore is disabled out of the box on Windows 10 which would prove your “Solution B”. However, this may differ from one edition to another, or from one type of installation (clean vs upgrade) to another.

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Ch100, increasing that allocated disk space won’t help because I increased the available space for system restore to 180 GB and it is at its greatest size now that it has ever been at 5.6 GB. That cannot be the issue, and Noel C states that he has many GB available to it also.

I will look elsewhere for a way to do this,and perhaps try Win 7 Back Up and Restore.

Thanks for your input.

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This computer was purchased new in February with Win 10 home–didn’t have time or money to order Pro.

When set up some of the settings were not set for system restore, but that was taken care of by MS and where I purchased it. The 4 elements that are needed for for a restore point are on, and as far as I know there are no more requirements. They are 1. System Restore is enabled for C, 2. Volume Shadow Copy is running and on automatic, 3. Task Scheduler is running and on Automatic, 3. Microsoft software shadow copy provider is running and on automatic

I don’t do marketing. For the most point I am a home user, but use it for “books and finances”, and I write a lot of documents.

I don’t know how to do choice A because I am just a home user, but I have a 972 GB available on this computer and only 52 are used. So I could increase that space easily if I knew how to do it. But, we should wait and see what Noel says about his Win 10.

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I have set aside 180 GB for system restore and only 5.6 GB are being used. The first thing I did on this computer was increase the amount allocated for system restore.

Noel C also states he has plenty of room in what he has allocated for restore points. So that is not the issue for either of us.

Thanks for the ideas though.

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Even though Win 8.1 removed the “Previous Versions” access point, there are still good tools (e.g., Z-VSScopy) to access data from within VSS shadow copies. Win 10 has actually brought the Previous Versions UI back, so yes, there are even better reasons to want to use VSS now. It’s a nice feature!

As one who runs my big Win 8.1 workstation from an SSD array, I have a deep history and don’t see a noticeable performance downside. At the moment it goes back 3 months, to February 12. However, in answer to K’s question, there are no “special” snapshots that are not subject to deletion when the allocated space fills up. VSS doesn’t work that way.

I suspect this is a case where some Microsoft programmer messed up the code so that it’s no longer paying attention to the configured limit. Note that both our Win 10 systems have accumulated only about 5 GB of System Restore snapshot data.

I haven’t actually done any System Image backups from my Win 10 VM lately because it’s a test system that lives as a set of VMware files on my SSD array, and it’s already backed up a couple of other ways – plus I don’t always leave it running. However, I *DID* test it thoroughly to make a System Image backup with wbadmin back in 2015 (and I even did a restore, because what good is a backup that can’t be restored). At that time I used a drive that’s no longer available to the VM, and it all worked then.

I had no inkling that Microsoft might ignore the size limit, though, and just delete shadow copies at their whim. That’s just wrong. Microsoft sometimes forgets who owns the data, and they’re altogether too eager to delete it.

(in response to ch100’s comment)… I would suggest against relying on File History for backup. IMO, that software appears to be poorly written. File History is what I turn off on every system of mine.

I guess I need to test System Image backup again on my Win 10 VM, though even without this new bit of trivia I had already decided it’s not a serious enough OS to rely on for real things.

-Noel

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I believe Bob wasn’t advising you, but rather postulating a decision BY MICROSOFT some months ago what to do about perceived slowdowns due to the use of the Volume Snapshot Service.

It’s a reasonable thought, though I usually don’t attribute to rational decision that which could be explained by incompetence. In this case they might have just screwed up the limit check. Perhaps there was a plan to remove the System Restore configuration entirely early on, and someone acted on it by hard-coding the limit. We can’t know, because it’s not open software.

Volume snapshots are a Good Thing, that really works: Given that SSDs have virtually no latency (“seek” time), the overhead for having to go to several disparate places on the disk to retrieve file data is less than it ever has before. Thus a system like VSS that can provide automatic accumulation of your data history now has more utility than it has ever had before. And our real-world experience running the older systems on such hardware – and having it run enviably – proves this!

There is NO justifiable reason to limit the System Restore depth on a modern system if the user has chosen to dedicate additional storage to it.

-Noel

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You might want to run this from elevated command prompt:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

and check how much space is *really* set up for the feature — as opposed to what the System Restore GUI suggests.

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>Is it possible to set up the Windows system
>imaging software from win 7 to run on a regular
>basis, or do you need to use a third party one?
>If so what is a good one?

Yes, it is possible, and I personally prefer the native backup facilities to 3rd party software.

They resurrected Windows 7 Backup & Restore in Win 10, but I don’t know if they provided a UI with which to schedule it.

However, with all of the recent Windows versions you can schedule a command line yourself using the Task Scheduler that will do the job. The command will be like this:

wbadmin start backup -allCritical -vssFull -quiet -backupTarget:G:

Note the -vssFull switch. That integrates the backup with the volume snapshot service and makes the backup both incremental and capable of doing a full system restoral from a number of different snapshots.

-Noel

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Is this problem, in the slightest way, connected with something similar in Win7 — trying to make a second or subsequent system image of C: onto an external drive (1 TB, with plenty of space to spare) always destroys the previous system image there? Win7’s explanation is that “the target drive has insufficient space” — but permit me to know better.

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Hi,

Check the following http://www.toms-world.org/blog/restore_point_creator/updates
specialy the information posted on “May 10, 2016 — Version 4.0 Build 1”

It expain why the Restore Points get deleted.

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K, it was just an idea, I have already said that I am not a user of System Restore for at least 2 reasons:
– It takes too much space on hard-disk
– It slows the system while taking the VSS image

Win 7 Back up and Restore is just a name for the Win 7 style backup on Windows 10. I think it is considered deprecated by Microsoft and was reintroduced only because of user pressure and as transitional technology. You might look only into the imaging feature of Win 7 Back up and Restore and use File History for the user files. File History has the advantage of using the same VSS technology, but keeping the backup on a different disk than the system drive unlike System Restore. But it is useful for user files backup and not system files backup. This is where an image of the C drive would be more useful.
You might have to look elsewhere for a third-party backup tool for this purpose.

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I think Bob(maybe)OrNot only does an analysis of various implementations and his post is not meant to provide a certain configuration against another. There is no recommendation to configure Solution A, it is just a technical assessment of what Microsoft could do to improve the implementation.
If you create many documents, then I think they should be prioritised for backup purpose and probably buying an large and high quality external drive with separate power supply and using File History on Windows 10 is the best option.
Backup solutions were discussed a lot in the last 2-3 months here and there are a lot of recommendations in those posts.
I have recently bought a Western Digital Elements 3TB external disk for this purpose being inspired by those posts and use only Windows 10 native backup tools. Being in Australia, the market and the prices here are somehow different than the US market, so you might find better offers over there if you are based in US.

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Thank you Noel!

I am pretty naive when it comes to this stuff so using the task scheduler may be beyond me, but I will look into it.

I would like to do what you suggest. I think it is a great idea.

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Noel,

I am fairly naive when it comes to computers. I have to apologize and say I did not understand your paragraph above beginning with:
“Volume snapshots are a Good Thing, that really works: Given that SSDs have virtually no latency (“seek” time), the overhead for having to go to several disparate places on the disk to retrieve file data is less than it ever has before. Th. . . .

Is this a general discussion about restore points, or are you calling restore points VSS?

As I work tonight, I would like to download some new programs like Revo uninstaller, and Sumatra and it looks like Malwarebytes Antiexploit* needs removing and reinstalling because it isn’t enabled in the startup menu, and in system settings isn’t running (some say updating Win 10 does this). But now, if I add a restore point, I lose a restore point. I need to save my restore points for monthly updates. There doesn’t seem to be a good choice.

Does anyone else have this problem or is it just Noel’s and my computer? My computer is under warranty, I could insist there is a problem if this is some sort of fluke restricted to a specific batch of Windows 10 computers. However, Noel’s doesn’t appear to be a 2016 purchase.

When I can come up for air I will have to call HP, but I am losing important information while I don’t have the time to call them.

This truly stinks.

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Doktomotor, I will do that if you can help me a bit. I know I have to run the command as an administrator, but what should the entire command line look like?

When mine opens command prompt (admin) it looks like this C:WindowsSystem32>

Do I just type the command you wrote after the System32>?

Thank you very much!

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More of my ignorance exposed here–Does the old Windows 7 Backup feature create a system image when it does the backup, or does it just back up files?

I have always thought the Backup and Restore were different things. I thought to restore you created the system image (and thus a system image restore point is created too). On Windows 10 this will probably be destroyed.

I haven’t used the Backup portion because I always just copied my documents to an external drive. MS says the about the Backup of “Backup and Restore” “. . .you can select the individual folders, libraries, and drives that you want to back up.. . . .” So, I gather it doesn’t copy your system, just files, but I could be wrong.

Woody, do you have restore points, or do you mess with your systems so much that you would not accumulate many.

I am just trying to figure out if some Windows 10 machine work properly with regard to restore points. I’d like to try to get a new computer if that is the case.

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meh. . . I just checked my restore points. I had 10 yesterday, and I have 7 today.

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Noel, File History uses VSS and I think everyone would agree that VSS is one of the best pieces of software which has ever been designed by Microsoft. I don’t know if File History is poorly designed or not, but I think for me it does the job well. Please let me know which are the downsides or the poorly designed parts that you identified or are documented elsewhere.

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This really is a fascinating recap – I had no idea.

http://www.toms-world.org/blog/restore_point_creator/updates

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Win7 backup can do a full backup, or incremental images. I have plenty of restore points, on all of my machines.

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Yes, just type it there.

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Just type (or Copy & Paste) the command as given – in this situation the prompt is not going to affect how the command functions.

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I agree this blog appears to identify the cause of the deleted restore points.The author says there is a “scheduled background task that is run every time you restart your computer” and states that it seems to delete restore points that are older than 17 days.

The blog post states that he has included code (in the utility that he has written) that disables this background task. However he doesn’t identify the task so that it can be disabled manually. Anyone care to hunt this task and publish its name?

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I have submited a request to the author of the blog to provide further details of the task – and asked if the task can be successfully disabled manually – without use of his utility. I wouldn’t put it past MS to re-enable this type of task if it sees the users has dared change the default setting.

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So, just to be clear, because I am not “getting” it. They both sound the same to me.

By full Backup do you mean the (a)entire system–system images and all files. I was questioning the word backup in my question.

What are incremental images? I know what incremental means, but what do you mean by incremental images? (b) Do you mean a group of system images that accrue over time so I would actually have what the old system restore did? I hate sounding so dense, but I am looking for something that will give me a place with my all restore points in case I need to go back beyond 3 or 4 restarts or even 3 months ago.

If you have all your restore points, is something wrong with my computer? It is only 3 months old.

Maybe I have a chance to get a new one from HP if I got a decent service representative.

I found that article at Tom’s world interesting too, but not so much as to try to find and purchase or download a relatively unknown product.

I am running tight deadlines, and not getting much sleep as if is, and just don’t know if I can deal with the MS people when you call them for help. Often. . ., well, let’s not go there other than to say it is a nightmare.

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Woody,

Sorry, I will just look up Windows Backup and Restore on my own. It must be described clearly somewhere. You have better things to do with your time, such as address this issue of no restore points and a bazillion other Windows issues. . .

Still, because this is under warranty and only 2.5 months old do you think I can use this issue to get a new computer that works correctly with regard to restore points (and some other things)?

Thank you!

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What’s the name of the task I need to disable? It’s going on my to do list for setting up windows 8.1_U3 clean install.

As I know it system restore keeps a max of 64 restore points, as long as it’s under your size limit.

Modern HDs are fast, so a new 1TB (aka ~931GB) drive shouldn’t have much trouble with 64GB of system restore.

vssadmin.exe Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=64GB

17 days is an unreasonable limit.

On another note, I’ve seen computers with broken automatic windows update (ex: one update won’t install) try and fail to install the same update 3 times a day (set to 3AM, 7PM is after 3AM so it is fair game to start the install). Installing that often makes lots of restore points, deleting the ones from before the problem.

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Have a failing update creating restore points over and over again?

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“File History uses VSS”

Does it? Certainly not on any of my machines. It uses copies of files (with timestamps added to filenames) and certainly is a pain to work with, not to mention the wasted disk space.

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I haven’t read all the responses so this may have been brought up previously if so Mea Culpa. I know in Win 7 there a a lot of scheduled tasks and I have literally deleted some of them. Scheduled tasks changed from turn this off at the top of the tree, but triggers down below were still set, so the task would run again. I am guessing that this is one of those tasks within there, which one I don’t know. I’d search there and disable all the triggers associated with it. The other thing about restore points is that if not cleaned up they’ll fill up the disk and in order to clean them up you have to use the disk clean up utility which will bomb out when you try to start it up as you are out of disk space. MS should have set aside disk space to prevent this, but didn’t. If this ever happens you have to remove the affected drive and mount it on a Linux machine to gain access to the folder as it is a system folder. You could fiddle with perms, but I found removing the drive and cleaning up the old files a safer approach, however there’s more than one way to solve a problem :-).

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I’d say your chances of getting a replacement are zero – but don’t let that stop you from trying! You’re suffering from a very common problem, it seems.

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Yep, a full backup is a system backup. The whole enchilada.

Incremental images are just the deltas – the things that change from one snapshot to the next.

In practice, incremental images work, but full backups work much better. If you’re very worried about losing data, do a full incremental backup every night when you go to sleep.

If you do sleep. Sometimes I wonder if I do…

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Dear ItSecGuy–I know what you suggest is beyond my capabilities, but perhaps someone else can look into the scheduled tasks issue, and other things you mentioned. Noel C and I both have enough disk space and computer space allocated to restore points to ensure what we have done is not the problem.
Thanks!

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doktornotor and DougCuk, you may be onto something!

This is what I came up with with the command you gave me doktornotor:

Shadow Copy Storage association
For volume: (C:)\?Volume{c569d3ab-aaee-4823-8d7f-bb5f7b2ab7d7}
Shadow Copy Storage volume: (C:)\?Volume{c569d3ab-aaee-4823-8d7f-bb5f7b2ab7d7}
Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 6.30 GB (0%)
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 9.03 GB (0%)
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 181 GB (20%)

The Maximum shadow copy is what I set, 181 GB but the allocated Shadow Copy Storage space is 9.03 GB or 0%.

I eagerly await a response, but know I will be really afraid to change anything in the computer. I’ll do it though if you and Woody think it is a wise move.

Can a computer illiterate person fix this with some good guidance? I would be most indebted to you!

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NotReallyBob(fromanothercomputer)

What do you mean by what is the name of the task you need to disable?

I wish I could get 64 restore points. I have had a maximum of 11, and windows 10 changes them at least once a week by deleting some.

Bob, I probably am the only one not following what this is for, but could you explain what it is?
vssadmin.exe Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=64GB

If this is a command I should use, what will it do for me, and will it mess up a computer for a novice if they don’t know what they are doing? I hate to say itm but at this point I would need a step by step guide.

Thanks

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I contacted the author of the Toms-World blog to clarify which background task is deleting restore points under Win8 an Win10. And it appears that it is the basic SR task in the SystemRestore section.

Here is his response:
No, there is no separate background task that’s deleting the restore points older than 17 days. The same background task that’s creating the restore points seems to be the same task that’s deleting the restore points. Which is bad.

I don’t know why Microsoft programmed this task to do that, all I know is that it’s pretty stupid that they did. The purpose of the program (System Restore Point Creator) is to give you, the user, more control than ever before over System Restore.

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That was a fast response from the creator. Thank you for posting it DougCuk!

Rui Paz thank you for bringing this to our attention.

If I understand this correctly, if what the creator says is true, then the amount of space allocated to the shadow volume that Doktornotor asked about would not necessarily help.

To me, some of the descriptions seem out of sync on the product webpage. He has updates from 5 days ago, but talks about it being compatible with the future windows 10. It could just be that keeping the webpage up to date is secondary to his purpose.

In any case, I don’t know if if someone who is as computer naive as I am should dive in to try it. In addition, I would not be able to keep the system restore point created before I downloaded it due to the main issue.

Sheesh, even with having created 3 system images on an external HD since getting this computer in February, I don’t know if I could restore the system to them!

Where is the Quality Control Team for MS? (We could ask that a lot about MS issues) I don’t understand why MS hasn’t picked up on fixing this and why it happens to only some of us–Lucky us!

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I did a quick search of reviews on the program Restore Point Creator. It’s been around for quite a while, even before Windows 8 and 10 came along. Although my search was really just skimming, I am not certain how one would actually restore their system to a restore point in this 3rd party program. He has videos regarding how to create restore points, but I did not see any on how to actually use a previously created restore point for any system, let alone Win 10.

I don’t know when his two FAQs were written, but this doesn’t sound encouraging if it only uses what MS provides. So, if I read this correctly MS will wipe them out(?) on Windows 10. http://www.toms-world.org/blog/restore_point_creator/faq

“Q: Is there a way to save restore points to another drive such as an external drive?
A: Unfortunately, that’s not possible. My program uses only what’s provided by Microsoft in Windows. Restore Points aren’t meant to be a kind of long-term backup solution, . . . “

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K, System Restore is NOT a backup. It is just a short term convenience built-in Windows which is not meant to last forever. There is documentation from Microsoft which says that the System Restore points are deleted when certain events happen, like upgrading the version from 10240 to 1511. The reason is that rolling back would actually create an inconsistent state. Why Microsoft decided to delete the restore points after 17 days and why this is not clearly documented in the official documentation is a different issue. It is documented for Windows 7 that the time allowed for a System Restore point to exist is 90 days.

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Sometimes the file names and organizational structure is almost as important as the data. Anything that has you renaming 4000 pictures is a less useful backup solution.

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If you disable a task it should not run unless something un-disables it (program / another task).

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As I understand it the reason restore points are being deleted under Win10 is that MS have changed the default action of the standard SR scheduled task – with no ability to over-ride. If you allow the standard SR task to run it creates a new restore point and then cleans out any restore points over 17 days old – regardless of the amount of disk space allocated for the System Restore shadow copies.

The Restore Point Creator utility does JUST that – it creates restore points – using the MS shadow copy system. These restore points are visible if you run System Restore – and can be restored in the normal way. The utility is just an alternative way to trigger the creation of a restore point – and can be setup to running manually or as a scheduled task or both.

Agreed the website documentation is lagging behind but if you check the changelog the utility has supported Win10 since July 2015.

The utility is also available as a Zipped “semi-portable” application – that doesn’t need to be installed – so it makes minimal changes to your system. It doesn’t alter the setup of your computer – other than to disable the SR task that is deleting your restore points. So no real risk to giving it a try.

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Bob(maybe)OrNot, How would I know which task to disable? Is there some specific task to which you are referring in order to help me out? If so, I’d really like to know. Your knowledge is certainly superior to mine. Maybe Noel C. understands what task you are making reference to.

Thanks!

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DougCuk,

I am a novice, at best. I have no way of figuring out what the SR task is that is deleting the restore points, let along how I would disable it. I think in a case with a computer dummy like me, I could do more harm than good.

Could you correct me if I am wrong. I actually am a very capable person but my computer abilities and vocabulary/terminology are limited. I know many out there on the web are in my shoes also struggling with this very situation so if it can be clarified for me, and all the other naive ones, it would be most helpful.

With that as a given, are you saying that the Restore Point Creator sets up a situation such 1. The restore points it creates are in the very same location as the Windows 10 restore points reside, (so we can use them to restore our systems if necessary) and 2. that because the program Restore Point Creator creates or makes its own restore points, the Windows 10 OS cannot go into the location where all restore points are kept and delete them. It can only go in and delete Windows created restore points, leaving the Restore Point Creator restore points unscathed?

As for a portable or semi portable program you write: “The utility is also available as a Zipped “semi-portable” application – that doesn’t need to be installed – so it makes minimal changes to your system. It doesn’t alter the setup of your computer – other than to disable the SR task that is deleting your restore points. So no real risk to giving it a try.”

Does all that mean you can put it on a thumb drive and use on a per time basis, or does it affect the computer for all time after it is used one time? As a semi-portable application does it mean you attach the thumb drive each time you want to create a restore point of your own? And as a portable program would you be able to set up creation of restore points on a schedule as the “in the computer version” does.

Now some of these questions may be beyond what you could possibly know like the last one, but some of the others I’ve asked are based on things you actually did write.

I am also confused as to whether it disables the SR task that is deleting my restore points for all time into the future if it is used for the very first time, or do you have to do it for every restore point you create? If this is the case, then will Windows still go in and delete it’s own automatic restore points and then leave my manual ones?

I know I have asked a lot of questions, but I want some understanding before I put this on a win 10 computer (my only computer) that already has issues just because it is a win 10 with an ever changing OS and many problems that can cause meltdowns or disable programs and usb ports, etc.

I do greatly appreciate your help and time, and if this works would be indebted to Tom the creator and you for helping me.

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Hi there. I just wanted to say that I’m having the same problem.

I recently started having another problem, and read that it might have been caused by a Windows update, so I wanted to roll my system back a couple of weeks. Went to SR and was surprised and alarmed to see so few checkpoints. Fortunately, I did still have a checkpoint from before the update, so I restored, and that did indeed fix the problem. Of course, I’ll need to find a more permanent solution, but that’s another story. It did, however, underline the value of SR.

K, thanks for posting about this, and please report back if you find a solution.

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@Richard Wein I have not found a solution to this yet, and am still looking. At this point I am simply creating system images before any Windows 10 updates are installed (so monthly). I would rather rely on that route though. I also try to manually create a restore point or two throughout the month in case I should need one. Of course, the system wipes them out regularly.

I would like to try the restore point creator program mentioned in the May responses, but I have not tried it yet. Just life and MS update issues are keeping me busy, but hope to do it some day soon.

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Just an update on this issue. While earlier versions of Windows 10 appeared to have a 17 day limit on the lifespan of System Restore Points – this seems to have been increased to 28 days (most likely with the release of either 1709 or 1803). Microsoft have hard-coded this – and (it appears) removed the ability to over-ride this by setting a registry value – as was available in Win7.

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Just to update this issue – it appears Microsoft have reduced the hard coded lifespan of System Restore Points again.

Testing with Win10 21H1 all System Restore Points are automatically deleted by the system once they reach 10 days old. The exception is the last remaining Restore Point – which I believe remains until the next Feature Update is installed. In most cases you are likely to have only one Restore Point available in the event of a problem.

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Cybertooth

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That’s why I recommend full image backups.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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JohnW, Cybertooth

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