System Restore problems

[Guest]

Every time I try to go back to a restore point, I get a message that Windows
cannot restore that restore point. It cannot go back to ANY restore point. I
finally give up and turn System Restore off, to clear out the old restore
points, and on. I have not successfully restored from a restore point since I
installed SP2.

Has anyone any suggestions?

 

[Bob I]

Are you restarting the computer between turn off, turn on?

 

[Guest]

Thank you, Bob I.

I did not restart the computer between turn off and turn on. The information
in Help and Support about turning System Restore off and on says nothing
about restarting. At the moment, System Restore is on and there is only one
restore point, from last night. I assume that restore point was created when
I turned on System Restore.

 

[Bob I]

It's been my experience that IF changes are made to the system and the
change produces no effect, then restarting the system will usually
produce the desired result.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

Every time I try to go back to a restore point, I get a message
that
Windows cannot restore that restore point. It cannot go back to
ANY
restore point. I finally give up and turn System Restore off,
to
clear out the old restore points, and on. I have not
successfully
restored from a restore point since I installed SP2.

Unfortunately sometimes System restore gets corrupted. The
solution which usually works is to turn off System Restore
(thereby deleting all the existing Restore Points), then turn it
back on again.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

In


Unfortunately sometimes System restore gets corrupted. The
solution which usually works is to turn off System Restore
(thereby deleting all the existing Restore Points), then turn
it
back on again.

My apologies. That's exactly what you said you did and it didn't
work. I misread your message, and thought you hadn't turned it
back on again.

 

[Guest]

I redid the System Restore reset per Bob I's point, with all steps in
Administrator:
- Turned off System Restore
- I shut down and restarted
-Turned on System Restore
- It automatically created a system checkpoint restore pont.
- I shut down and restarted.
- I waited 1.5 hours
- I asked System Restore to restore the system to the restore point it had
created when I turned it on.
- Result: "Your computer cannot be restored to this restore point."

So, how do I get it to be able to use the restore points it creates?

 

[Bob I]

Humm, wondering if something on your PC doesn't like SP2. Will the
restore work in Safe Mode?

 

[Guest]

I just tried doing a system restore in safe mode. I got the usual result:
"your computer cannot be restored..."

 

[Bert Kinney]

Hi Martin,

Hi,

Here are some troubleshooting tips for System Restore in Windows XP.
Please post the event information from Event Viewer as suggested in
the page below.
System Restore Failures to restore:
http://home.earthlink.net/~mvp_bert/html/srfail.html

Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://dts-l.org/

 

[Guest]

Hi Bert,

Thank you very much for the document on system restore failures. Here is
what I have done:

I checked the event log for sr and srservice. The only things that are there
since the beginning (Mar. 26) are 9 of event ID=111, "restore point
failed..." There is no information about the cause of the failures. There are
also events for turning off and turning on system restore.

I have McAfee internet suite and it scans regularly. I have not seen an
infection of any sort in the past two years.

I checked all t he other points prior to "adjust the disk space" and
everything appears normal.

I hve 2.9 Gbytes free and System Restore was using most of it. I changed
System Restore to use 954 Mbytes. This is the only change that I made.

I purged the System Restore memory (turned it off, restarted, turned it on).

I created a "test" restore point and then successfully restored to it.

I have previously sometimes purged the system restore memory, following
whichthe first attempt to restore to the restore point following the purge
worked but subsequent attempts to restore the same restore point failed, so I
am not awfully confident that the problem is really solved. I guess I will
try the reinstall if it fails again, and then the repair install.

Any other advice will be appreciated.

Regards,
Martin Sachs

 

[Bert Kinney]

Hi Martin,

Hi Bert,
Thank you very much for the document on system restore
failures. Here is what I have done:

You're welcome.

For troubleshooting disable monitoring of all drive except C:\ This
is assuming Windows is installed on C:\

I checked the event log for sr and srservice. The only
things that are there since the beginning (Mar. 26) are 9
of event ID=111, "restore point failed..." There is no
information about the cause of the failures. There are
also events for turning off and turning on system restore.

Keep an eye on these events every day to note any new errors.

I have McAfee internet suite and it scans regularly. I
have not seen an infection of any sort in the past two years.

I checked all the other points prior to "adjust the disk
space" and everything appears normal.

I hve 2.9 Gbytes free and System Restore was using most
of it. I changed System Restore to use 954 Mbytes. This
is the only change that I made.

If System Restore (SR) was using all of the free space that could be
the problem. Have you ever received any low disk space messages
pertaining to SR? Reducing the storage space may be the fix.

I purged the System Restore memory (turned it off,
restarted, turned it on).

I created a "test" restore point and then successfully
restored to it.

This is good. Keep an eye on SR to make sure automatic restore points
are being created. By default one should be created every 24 hours as
long as there is sufficient system idle time.

On the following Scripts page, download and run the first two scripts.
The first script will show how often (in hours) restore points are
created. The default is 24 hours.
The second script will indicate how many days restore points are
retained. The default is 90 days.

You can also look at these troubleshooting step when automatic restore
points fail to be created.
http://home.earthlink.net/~mvp_bert/html/srauto.html

 

[Bert Kinney]

Sorry about that Martin, here you go.
http://home.earthlink.net/~mvp_bert/html/srscripts.html

 

[Guest]

Continuing the System Restore saga:

I ran the two scripts. They show the defaults: restore points are retained
for 90 days and automatic restore points are created every 24 hours, which
is happening.
There have been no "low disk space" messages.

As I said yesterday, the fact that a restore worked once since I reduced the
restore point space to 954 Mbytes, didn't prove that it is fixed.

Today I tried to restore to the restore point that I created and
successfully restored yesterday and I got the usual "Your computer cannot be
restored..." It also failed to restore to the automatic restore point that
was created yesterday. Note that there are only three restore points since I
reduced the memory and reset SR, so it isn't an "out of space" condition.

The recorded event is simply an information event "The system restore
service could not restore...". I tried the "more information" link in the
event description. It says that possible causes include a corrupted restore
point or an unknown problem. That's not very helpful :-( It also advised
trying it in safe mode.

I tried in safe mode and it failed again. I tried again in safe mode and
this time, I re-entered safe mode on the restart but it still failed.

I will go through all the documents that I collected from previous posts but
I think that the only thing left is to try reinstalling or reinstalling with
repair. My experience is that reinstalling is a last resort and generally
does not solve whatever the problem is.

Is there any other advice?

It seems to me that System Restore is one thing that ought to work all the
time. When a restore is really needed, finding out that System Restore can't
restore anything is pretty serious. My recollection is that these problems
began when I installed SP2. Do you know if Microsoft is working on the
reliability of System Restore?

 

[Bert Kinney]

The problem could be an app running on the system that is interfering
with the SR filter.
Before doing the reinstall (which I don't think fix this) you could
perform a clean boot to troubleshoot.

How to perform a clean boot in Windows XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310353&sd=RMVP

How to troubleshoot by using the System Configuration utility in
Windows XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310560&sd=RMVP

And no, I am not aware of any fixes that MS may be working on.

By the way, good job on following the troubleshooting instructions.