System Restore all off, still creating restore points on 2nd parti

  • Thread starter Thread starter WB
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W

WB

Although we have System Restore turned off on all drives, restore points are
still being created on the secondary partitions.

The OS partiton is drive C, NTFS. The secondary partition is drive D, FAT32.

The restore points are being created when applications (i.e. DirectX,
WinDVD, etc.) are installed from the second partition (drive D). We must
install these from a secondary partition.

What are we missing? These restore points are filling up our drives.

Also, I thought System Restore wouldn't work on FAT32 drives?

Thanks,
 
Bill, I use two drives both formatted FAT32 and when I turn off System
Restore on all Drives, it's turned off. With NTFS you might have a issue
with permissions on the other drives
But, just guessing.
 
Thanks for the reply Rich. Not sure what permissions I should set or unset.

BTW: The System Restore Service is stopped, but restore points are still
being created. This makes no sense, unless it's an undocumented bug.
 
WB said:
Although we have System Restore turned off on all drives, restore points are
still being created on the secondary partitions.

The OS partiton is drive C, NTFS. The secondary partition is drive D, FAT32.

The restore points are being created when applications (i.e. DirectX,
WinDVD, etc.) are installed from the second partition (drive D). We must
install these from a secondary partition.

What are we missing? These restore points are filling up our drives.

Also, I thought System Restore wouldn't work on FAT32 drives?

Thanks,
Click to expand...

Regardless of *why* these System Restore points are being created,
perhaps the best way for you to deal with the situation is to turn SR
*on* for all partitions and use the "Settings" tab of the SR User
Interface to set the amount of disk space to use to the minimum (move
slider all the way to the left). By default, in XP, SR uses 12% of the
partition, which is too much space on today's large drives even if you
*want* to have SR running. If System Restore runs out of the storage
space that has been allocated towards its use, it will delete the oldest
restore point in order to create space for the new restore point.

System Restore actually creates restore points under at least 5
different circumstances:

1. scheduled restore points (system checkpoints) (approx every 24 hours)
2. before a restore to a restore point (so you can UNDO the restore)
3. before installing Windows updates received via AutoUpdate
4. before installing an app that uses a SR-compatible installer (e.g.
InstallShield).
5. manually created restore points

Turning SR off *should* not only disable the creation of system
checkpoints (which also relies on the Task Scheduler service), but also
should stop SR from checking for events 3 and 4. You can use
services.msc to see if the System Restore service is actually stopped
when you tell it to "Turn off System Restore on all drives."

It may be that the applications that you are installing do not rely on
SR being triggered by the installation but instead create a manual
restore point. I know that some antimalware apps (e.g., Spybot Search &
Destroy) can optionally create a restore point prior to deleting malware
that the app has identified. Perhaps the apps you are installing do the
same. In this case, your SR configuration settings are being bypassed.

You can delete SR points that are created by your app installations. Use
the user interface to turn SR on for each partition that has SR points
and then turn it off or use the Disk Cleanup tool (cleanmgr.exe) for
each partition and specify "remove all but the most recent restore
point" on the "More Options" tab.

In Vista and Win 7, SR relies on the "shadow copy" feature of NTFS and
thus can't monitor FAT32 partitions. In XP, SR works differently (see,
e.g.,
http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/windowsvista/features/foreveryone/backup.mspx).
 
Although we have System Restore turned off on all drives, restore points are
still being created on the secondary partitions.

The OS partiton is drive C, NTFS. The secondary partition is drive D, FAT32.

The restore points are being created when applications (i.e. DirectX,
WinDVD, etc.) are installed from the second partition (drive D). We must
install these from a secondary partition.

What are we missing? These restore points are filling up our drives.

Also, I thought System Restore wouldn't work on FAT32 drives?

Thanks,
Click to expand...

Do you mean Automatic Restore Points are no longer being created, but
when you install some programs, the installation program creates a new
RP for you as part of the installation?

This is so you can restore back if the new program installation
fails. If you don't like it, change it.

Restore points are set to only take 12% of your drive by default, but
you can adjust that. It is damn near impossible for RPs to fill up a
HDD - they do not accumulate forever and will stop being created
before you run out of HDD unless something else is wrong.

How big is your HDD and what are your settings and would you like to
change them?

Perhaps a better understanding of how System Restore works will help
guide you and simultaneously relieve any possibility of frustration
and misunderstandings.
 
Thanks for the replies. I was able to watch an OS installation and noticed
that a restore point is created immediately on my D drive (drive 0, partition
2). The files that it backed up are files that get copied from a network
share to the D partition (not necessarily when apps are installed from the D
drive).

I'll try setting the DiskPercent registry entry to "0" or "1". I did try to
set the "CreateFirstRunRp" to 0, but that didn't help.

We do need an "automated" method for disabling (or reducing the size of) the
system restore points.

Thanks again,
 
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