System Restore Problem

[terryco]

Hi, a Friend asked me if i can sort a problem for him. His PC is a Lenovo Thinkcentre M series Desktop with Windows 7. It was running very slow and he suspected a Virus. He did a Scan wih Microsoft Free Antivirus and it showed nothing wrong. I suggested he used System Restore and take it back to an earlier date. He had restore points but when clicking he got this Message " The drive cannot be found, you must always restore the drive that contains windows. Restore other drives is optional" I have the PC which apart from the problem is running fine. I did a factory Reset and still get the message. Running in Safemode still will not run a Restore. The Desktop is less than two years old, so i dont think the Hard Drive is Dying. I have to give him it back today, so if anyone can come up with a soloution i'll print it out for him Thanks.

 

[Ian]

That's an unusual problem!

Can you please try going to the System Information panel (press Windows Key + Pause/Break key to get there), then click "system protection" from the left column. There should then be a list of available drives, with a way to toggle their protection status. I wonder if the System (usually C) drive was not selected for backup, but a secondary one was?

 

[terryco]

Thank you for replying Ian. I have given the PC back now as he needs to use it. I will print any thing off and give it to him this afternoon. Ill report back later.

 

[terryco]

Sorry its taken a while to get back to you Ian. I have my Friends Pc back again now. I did as you suggersted, The C drive was on but i noticed Lenovo Recovery and DRV was turned off. I turned DRV on and tried a System Restore and got a dfferent setting that had System restore Turned off. Please see attachment (1) I unchecked Turn Off system Restore to get The second Attachment. I moved the slider in (1) up a bit and highlighted Windows 7 ready to restore in (2) and it seems to work. I had an Microsoft update of over 200 Mb's and it started to restore. I cancelled it quickly. Ill leave it running today and hope to get a small update to make sure, but i think its ok now. What would the ideal settings for the Max Usage slider be in (1)? I looked at the settings on my PC and System restore is turned off and the max usage is zero and mine works fine

 

[Ian]

That's great if it's working now . I'm not quite sure why the SYSTEM_DRV partition needs to be included in the restore point, as it's just a recovery partition - but if it's working then I wouldn't change anything from how it is now. If it's not making any restore info for the recovery drive then it should need 0 storage space (for SYSTEM_DRV), which is how it's set up at the moment.

 

[terryco]

Thank You Ian. I dont know if it was changing the DRV or the large 200 MB Microsoft Update that did the trick, but it seems ok now.