Vanishing restore points.

marite · 23 Jan 2024

Hi
As I had issues with W10 workstatin 22H2 or Pro 22H2 not seen W10 by some applications giving me upon installation "sorry but this application needs windows 7 or higher...", last sunday PM & night were fresh eveything install WITH manual restore points made by me at every steps.

At the end, there were around 10 points eating around 350 Mo.

Last night my system had issues hibernating, going to sleep for 4, 5 mns THEN waking up.
The disturbing thing is upon investigation, I've just discovered that ALL the restore points are gone. Poofff.. Nothing left.

I've looked thru event viewer, no crash, no nothing besides a com one with one server failing to register, giving regular warnings.

Gaining access to c:\system volume information, there's just nothing here...

How is this possible ?

dalchina · 23 Jan 2024

Certain kinds of updates can result in a loss of restore points. Win 10 should not be receiving any feature updates now, though.

Please feel free to review some previous discussions on lost restore points to see if there are any hints.

I have a restore point created on schedule to complement my routine use of disk imaging.

Restore points, as you know I'm sure, do not affect your personal files, whilst restoring and image almost certainly will- as every whole partition restored is taken back to a previous date. Everything on it.

Try3 · 23 Jan 2024

marite said:

How is this possible ?

Because Windows manages its Restore points and deletes any that it decides are no longer worthwhile.
If you want to protect your system, you need to make system images using a third-party utility such as Macrium reflect.
If you want to make Restore points as well then that's fine because they can be very convenient but the reliable protection is the system image.

All the best,
Denis

marite · 23 Jan 2024

Big thanks for your insights on that matter.

Regarding updates, history shows the last one occuring the day before at morning, no culprit here.
I'm more and more concerned about software doing in my back things it's not supposed to do, like in session, enabling virus protection I did disabled before to be sure it won't interfere with what I was doing, or deleting major files for me to correct eventually disfunctionnal OS.

About macrium... Well.. I'm not sure about the fuss about it as I find it so circonvoluted in the ergonomy department, nonetheless having had a bad experience with it restoring a 3 years old W7 image messing, god knowss how, my previous W10 workstation licence...

Too bad, I was going to backup these restore points and eventually image my new W10 pro as, after 3 setups in one week, I'm fed up with windows + softawres/applications installations + customisations + settings. I was even ready to sysprep this dektop or some alternative.

Ghot · 23 Jan 2024

@marite

Macrium Reflect, AOMEI Backupper and Hasleo Backup Suite - GUIDES | Windows 11 Forum

dalchina · 24 Jan 2024

System Restore and disk imaging are two completely different tools. The one is neither the equivalent of nor a replacement for the the other.

If you don't like Macrium's GUI, then try e.g. Hasleo Backup (Chinese, incorporates the best features of Macrium paid).
When I create a differential image with MR, it takes about 4 clicks to start it, given that I created a definition file when I created my first full image.

Disk imaging is/can be used to
- help prevent the need for a clean install in non-recoverable situations
- transfer a build to another PC
- as backup- you can mount images and extract files
- recover from e.g. disk failure, ransomware etc
- go back to a previous good state when some unresolvable problem occurs

You can restore partitions using a bootable disk if necessary.

System Restore rarely helps with unbootable PCs.

Backing up restore points is unlikely to be of help. Restore points only secure
- the registry
- updates
- programs installed
- drivers

Basically a specific set of file types.

A given restore point is only applicable in the context in which it was created.