What do you mean by "not restart"? It won't boot at all or gets stuck at some point during the booting process? How were you able to access the restore points you tried? If you were able to access them via command prompt you can may be able to use the command prompt to transfer your data on to a USB drive. Also, some boot up problems can be ironed out with a boot repair disc. If you don't have one you can ask a friend who's also running W10 if you can make one from their PC.
Would not boot into my normal startup (for password etc) but came up with a series of prompts e.g. repair start up, advanced options and others I cannot easily recall. One of them was to select system restore point. This gave me access directly to other restore points. Same problems arose. Once again it would not reboot into my Windows start and logon screens. In despair (and while waiting for a reply to my query) I turned the computer off. When I restarted my computer, up came a little screen that said trying to restore from a restore date (of recent days) and eventually restarted everything okay so that I could once again log on and access my programs and data. Happy but with a lingering doubt about the real effectiveness of Win 10 restore points. Restored a little (very little) faith in this process.
Thanks for your prompt reply, much appreciated. I think I should back up (and remove) all my data etc and make a disc image in case of this "nonsense" again. Your valued thoughts about this process please?
I can tell you disc images have saved my ass on more than one occasion, lol. I use an external USB drive and the app that comes with Windows Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Backup and Restore (Windows 7) > Create System Image.
However, make sure you fixed any problems first or you'll be saving a "tainted" image and end up putting the problem(s) back if you ever need to reinstate the image.
I would highly recommend Macrium Free Macrium Reflect Free
Windows restore points are at best a bit flaky. Imaging with Macrium to an external drive is quick, easy and safe. Restoring is also quick and easy and safe. Macrium is used by many, many members here with confidence. Acronis is also an option.
Typical imaging time is 10-15 minutes (with verification) and 8-10 for restore. Yes, it's longer than creating a restore point, but it is also virtually bullet proof. Backing up is an essential part of any computing. Worth the time to get a reliable one.
TC...
Yes, the native imaging will work. It takes a longer time, and you will overwrite the previous one each time. Something like Macrium allows for as many full system images as you want, limited only by space available. Backup plan of Daily/Weekly/Monthly is easy to set up and allows going back to any point in time you have an image for. TC
I've actually tried Macrium and it always fails for me. It gets about 25% done, some times more, some times less, and then I get a "Backup failed" message. It also goes excruciatingly slow. I exhausted myself trying to troubleshoot it and finally gave up. (I considered it may be the drive so I plan on getting a new one and giving Macrium another shot, as I liked the options it offered.)
Your specs say you have a desktop. Slightly confused. Anyway, no the image is not a bootable OS image. The native image from using the supplied Windows tool is not bootable, either. Macrium will let you create a bootable thumb drive which can then be used to restore an image from an external USB hard drive.
Quote
