Be careful about Win 10 Restore Point.

After I clean installed Win 10, and then installed many programs that I normally use. And when the computer worked just the way I wanted - I decided to set the Restore Point right then.
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Then I started (doing foolish things) fixing problems trying to get Win 10 and Win XP computers to be able to talk to one another and use one another's printers. Changed settings here and there and Services section on Win 10. Before I knew it, the computer became so slow - I could click a mouse and waited forever to see its response (next screen), the computer became unusable.

I thought I was safe, just use the Restore Point to get back to where when the computer was working great.
To my surprise, it took a long long time and ended up with a screen with nothing but an Icon of Recycle Bin on the top left corner - all my installed programs were gone and still is a mighty slow computer.

I had to do another clean install and then installed all the programs I normally use again. Cost me lots of time.

This Windows 10 Restore Point just doesn't do what I thought it would do - return to the day when everything was working fine and computer was fast. (At least that was what happened to me.)

It is not a substitute for a good backup, that is for sure.

Geneo said:

It is not a substitute for a good backup, that is for sure.

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Thanks. I did do the Backup and set the "Restore Point" in the same evening.
After the compute ran into problems and became unusable, I chose to use the Restore Point. I have no idea if I invoked "Backup" it would make my computer as fast as before and get all my files back. I doubt it.

If I had done a bootable image of my hard disk (about 5 DVD disks, not too many files on the hard disk at the time), then that should help.
(Then again, I have never done that before - making a bootable image of my hard disk on DVDs.)

In the Win XP era, I could set the "Restore Point", and if later the computer got into trouble, I could use that Restore Point to get the computer to return to the exactly same condition when the Restore Point was set.

Not in Windows 10. Windows 10's "Restore Point" is a joke at this moment. (Hope Microsoft will fix this.)

I had the opposite effect with System Restore. I had to use it three times this past week because I ended up messing something up, but learned my lesson, and won't be playing around with system settings anymore (at least with things I really don't know much about). I would create a restore point then play around with settings and such. One of the times it was good for three days, but then the computer would become unstable to the point I could not undo what I did, so I restored back to the last point I made. All three times when I received the "System Restore completed successfully...." box after reboot I had all my stuff right where I left them as if I never proceeded after creating the point in the first place from theme settings to desktop icons/folders. Sorry to hear your bad luck, but System Restore saved me three times so far. I hope you figure out what made it not work correctly for you.

CountMike said:

Restore point was never intended to be a backup, it doesn't backup personal files etc. There are other options for backup, you can change system just so much for it to work. Win 10 is no exception.

Very true. I only use restore as a fail safe for bad updates, or if I tweak a system setting, and it goes bad. I do back up my files to an external source. When I restore I really only look for it to undo the bad thing I did or Microsoft did.

Learner99 said:

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Thanks. I did do the Backup and set the "Restore Point" in the same evening.
After the compute ran into problems and became unusable, I chose to use the Restore Point. I have no idea if I invoked "Backup" it would make my computer as fast as before and get all my files back. I doubt it.

If I had done a bootable image of my hard disk (about 5 DVD disks, not too many files on the hard disk at the time), then that should help.
(Then again, I have never done that before - making a bootable image of my hard disk on DVDs.)

If you want to restore your system, you need to make an image backup of your disk, You can do this with macrium reflect free edition.