Why does windows appear to totally reinstall and reset itself

woldsweather · 04 Sep 2017

A few weeks ago I came back to my PC (Dell Inspiron 580 latest Windows 10) to find instead of my usual cluttered desktop with all my files I had a blank screen and windows had set all the settings to default (my IE 11 replaced by edge and so on). Fortunately there was a system restore and was able to roll back to my normal set up Now it has done it again but there is no system restore point ( I have never understood why these aren't just created regularly automatically. The old one om 2/3 weeks ago should surely still been there? Is there any way o 'finding' a system restore point o roll back before I spend hours setting it all up again ?

woldsweather · 04 Sep 2017

Just to answer my own question it seems windows had restarted in some other 'blank' account. When I went into safe mode it booted to my account which made me realise this. When I rebooted to normal it stayed in my account. I have still never figured out how to automatically create restore point. eg daily on start up and delete old ones at the same time would be perfect.

AndreTen · 04 Sep 2017

Check this thread which is describing how to crate restore point via task scheduler:

create-restore-point-using-task-scheduler-windows-10-home

You can do it via cmd too, but since you want to run it daily...

Found powershell script on superuser... check answer 1 in that post

Place this line in notepad and save the file as CreateCheckpoint.ps1 (make sure that the file is not saved as CreateCheckpoint.ps1.txt).

Checkpoint-Computer -Description "Daily Restore Point"

Goto an administrator command prompt and type powershell. A window will pop open. Just go to the path of the file and type ./createcheckpoint.ps1 and it will create the restore point.

woldsweather · 05 Sep 2017

AndreTen said:

Check this thread which is describing how to crate restore point via task scheduler:

create-restore-point-using-task-scheduler-windows-10-home

You can do it via cmd too, but since you want to run it daily...

Found powershell script on superuser... check answer 1 in that post

I went hroghhe this wont letme typ i

AndreTen · 05 Sep 2017

woldsweather said:

I went hroghhe this wont letme typ i

Sorry, don't understand what you're trying to say...

Link to post on Superuser site basically says:
- create powershell scrip (type in Notepad and save file as .ps1)

Checkpoint-Computer -Description "Your description of Restore point"

-if you want to schedule it for daily use, make another file (.bat), in which you call ps1 script.

There is another option, which is used here by many users. Instead of Windows restore, install Macrium reflect (free version is more than enough) and schedule daily image for your system. First Image will be large, but after that only changes are backed up.

Macrium Imaging is far more reliable and faster to apply. Here are tutorials made by Kari: backup-restore-macrium-reflect

woldsweather · 05 Sep 2017

This website isn't allowing me to reply I type in and it corrupts the words.

Seems to work OK in this box. I tried the system of scheduling a restore but gave up when it needed me to have a password on my pc which I don't want.

AndreTen · 05 Sep 2017

woldsweather said:

This website isn't allowing me to reply I type in and it corrupts the words.

Seems to work OK in this box. I tried the system of scheduling a restore but gave up when it needed me to have a password on my pc which I don't want.

Also check the post above (about using Macrium). It's a great software, used by many here.

woldsweather · 05 Sep 2017

AndreTen said:

Also check the post above (about using Macrium). It's a great software, used by many here.

So where I have my WIndows on a 120 GB SSD and data on a 2Tb HD do you back up the C drive to the larger HD? There wouldn't be room on the C drive.

AndreTen · 05 Sep 2017

woldsweather said:

This website isn't allowing me to reply I type in and it corrupts the words.

Seems to work OK in this box. I tried the system of scheduling a restore but gave up when it needed me to have a password on my pc which I don't want.

At what step do you need to use a password? You have to schedule with administrator rights (elevated), but if you have administrator account without password, it should work. Not, that it is recommended ...

AndreTen · 05 Sep 2017

woldsweather said:

So where I have my WIndows on a 120 GB SSD and data on a 2Tb HD do you back up the C drive to the larger HD? There wouldn't be room on the C drive.

The best option is to backup on external drive. But backing up to any HD will be good.