Sysyem Restore: The REAL Reason it REPEATEDLY Cannot Restore

[Guest]

Numerous users have complained here about System Restore (SR) repeated
failing with the message:-

"Restoration Incomplete. Your computer cannot be restored to (whatever
point was selected). No changes have been made."

Various reasons for this have been offered here:-
1) Corrupt SR Point - most popular
2) Full SR disk space
3) SR Service not running
4) Improper or interrupted system shut-down - only reason offered by M/Soft KB
5) Norton AV 2006 Auto-protect is on

and a few cures have been proposed:-
1) Turn SR off then on (losing all but 1 SR Point) - most popular
2) Run in Safe Mode
3) Reinstall SR

While most of these reasons would explain the occasional failure of SR, they
do not address the REPEATED FAILURE of SR in this way.

The most likely reason for a repeated failure is that there is another
(non-system) disk drive that contains remnants of a SR points' storage area
(\System Volume Information) including repeats of some of SR controlling
files.

The way to fix this situation is to:-
1) Turn OFF SR on the other non-system drive ONLY
2) Do any or the required SR - this should succeed
3) Turn ON SR on the other non-system drive
4) All subsequent SRs should now succeed

I had been getting this SR failure EVERY time I tried it in the past 9 to 12
months. Altho I did not realise it at the time, I had installed a spare
system disk drive from an old XP Pro PC as a 2nd drive (E on my current XP
Home PC during that period. It wasn't until I tried turning off SR on E:
alone and SR started to work reliably again, that I cottoned on to the root
cause

 

[Bert Kinney]

Numerous users have complained here about System Restore (SR) repeated
failing with the message:-

"Restoration Incomplete. Your computer cannot be restored to (whatever
point was selected). No changes have been made."

Various reasons for this have been offered here:-
1) Corrupt SR Point - most popular
2) Full SR disk space
3) SR Service not running
4) Improper or interrupted system shut-down - only reason offered by
M/Soft KB 5) Norton AV 2006 Auto-protect is on

and a few cures have been proposed:-
1) Turn SR off then on (losing all but 1 SR Point) - most popular
2) Run in Safe Mode
3) Reinstall SR

While most of these reasons would explain the occasional failure of
SR, they do not address the REPEATED FAILURE of SR in this way.

If the source of problem is not fixed, then the failure will continue.

The most likely reason for a repeated failure is that there is another
(non-system) disk drive that contains remnants of a SR points'
storage area (\System Volume Information) including repeats of some
of SR controlling files.

Disabling SR should clear the contents of all the SVI folders. If not,
they can be manually cleared by deleting the contents of the SVI folder.

The way to fix this situation is to:-
1) Turn OFF SR on the other non-system drive ONLY
2) Do any or the required SR - this should succeed
3) Turn ON SR on the other non-system drive
4) All subsequent SRs should now succeed

A corrupt restore point will effect all restore points created after it.
The best advise is to disable SR on all drives to purge all existing
restore points. Then enable SR.

I had been getting this SR failure EVERY time I tried it in the past
9 to 12 months. Altho I did not realise it at the time, I had
installed a spare system disk drive from an old XP Pro PC as a 2nd
drive (E on my current XP Home PC during that period. It wasn't
until I tried turning off SR on E: alone and SR started to work
reliably again, that I cottoned on to the root cause

Yes, adding a drive to the system will create inconsistency in the SR
log, and cause restore point corruption. I am glad your solution worked,
and you got so save previously created restore points on C:.

 

[Guest]

If the source of problem is not fixed, then the failure will continue.

True, but I'm talking about failures still continuing after all the obvious
fixes, like resetting SR, have been tried. I had tried all these b4 and none
worked.

Disabling SR should clear the contents of all the SVI folders. If not,
they can be manually cleared by deleting the contents of the SVI folder.

A corrupt restore point will effect all restore points created after it.
The best advise is to disable SR on all drives to purge all existing
restore points. Then enable SR.

I had tried disabling/enabling SR FULLY many times in the past year, to no
avail. I didn't this time because 1) I knew it didn't help, 2) I wanted to
preserve the SR points so I could manually restore suspect files myself. It
wasn't until I disabled SR on drive E: ALONE that SR began to repeatedly work
again.

 

[Bert Kinney]

Interesting, thanks for passing it along.

 

[Guest]

The reason that disabling SR on the non-system drive ALONE works while
disabling and re-enabling SR FULLY doesn't is that :

- the former completely empties the \SVI Folder of that other drive alone,
thus getting rid of any confusing repeats of SR controlling files

- the latter only gets rid of all existing SR points (bar the latest) while
leaving any controlling files including the repetitions.

It is also advantageous, in that by keeping SR enabled, except for a
non-system drive, you can always go back to any existing SR point and
reinstate the system drive, where any problem is likely to lie; without
losing all this important data.

 

[Bert Kinney]

This is why it is advisable to let SR only monitor the System partition.

 

[Guest]

I dunno; you might want to protect a non-system drive, especially if you
install (non-Windows) programs there.

 

[Bert Kinney]

What do you mean by non-windows programs?

 

[Guest]

I just meant any software not actually part of the OS.
There is a well-respected school of thought that says: keep all non-system
software and data, including applications, segregated from the Windows system.

But I coulda just as well meant any non-Windows based software, such as DOS
programs, for my point to be valid.

Does it matter?

:
What do you mean by non-windows programs?

 

[Bert Kinney]

I just meant any software not actually part of the OS.
There is a well-respected school of thought that says: keep all
non-system software and data, including applications, segregated from
the Windows system.

This would be one of the only reasons to monitor a drive other than the
system drive.

But I coulda just as well meant any non-Windows based software, such
as DOS programs, for my point to be valid.

Does it matter?

One thing to remember, is that any application installed after the
restore point you are reverting to may not function. What happens is,
System Restore only removes monitored files for the installed
applications and the remaining files are left behind. This can cause the
application not to function. And in some cases, can also cause the
uninstall and reinstall process of the partially removed application to
fail. It is recommended to uninstall any applications that were
installed after the restore point you will be restoring to.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

There is a well-respected school of thought that says: keep all
non-system software and data, including applications, segregated from
the Windows system.

By "segregated," do you mean in a separate partition? There can be good
reason for putting data in a separate partition, but there is almost never a
good reason for separating applications into a separate partition.