Windows Tips

Configuring System Restore Options

When a rogue program or buggy driver causes your computer to crash, the System Restore feature can be a lifesaver. (For details on how you can use System Restore, If you accept its default settings this feature will gobble up a hefty chunk of disk space and can have unexpected (and unpleasant) side effects, including the deletion of recently downloaded files with no warning. Before you need to use System Restore, familiarize yourself with its workings and learn how to customize it so it doesn’t take you by surprise. You can take charge of System Restore in several ways.
To access the full set of System Restore options, open System in Control Panel and click the System Restore tab.

By default, System Restore monitors changes to every drive on your system and sets aside up to 12 percent of each drive for storing its data.

Using this dialog box, you can adjust any of the following settings:

Drive space used
By default, System Restore reserves 12 percent of available disk space on every drive. On a 30-GB drive, that adds up to an excessive 3.6 GB of storage space. To rein in space usage for a specific drive, click the Settings button to the right of that drive and move the slider control to the left.

note

The default location for System Restore data is d:\System Volume Information, where d is the letter of each drive. Each restore point is stored in its own subfolder, under the name _restoreGUID, where GUID is a unique 32-character alphanumeric identifier. This location cannot be changed. On an NTFS drive, these files are not accessible to users, even those in the Administrators group; the default NTFS permissions grant access only to the System account.


Drives to be monitored.
By design, System Restore keeps tabs on every drive on your system. If you’ve set aside one or more drives exclusively for data, you can safely turn off System Restore monitoring on those drives. This action has the effect of reclaiming the space used for restore points; it also prevents System Restore from inadvertently wiping out files on those drives. To exclude a drive from monitoring, open the System Properties dialog box and click the System Restore tab. Select the drive to exclude, click the Settingsbutton, and select Turn Off System Restore On This Drive. Note that this option is not available on the drive that contains your system files.

Use this slider to reduce the appetite of System Restore. The setting shown here is one-third the normal 12 percent allocation, but should be sufficient for most uses.

caution
System Restore is a powerful tool, and you shouldn’t disable it without a good reason. If you’re extremely low on disk space and a hard disk upgrade is impractical or impossible (as on some notebook computers), you might choose to do so. Otherwise, let it run.

Files and folders to be monitored.
By default, System Restore maintains a strict hands-off policy on all files stored in your My Documents folder and in the %SystemRoot%\Downloaded Program Files folder. Every other folder on your system is fair game, however, and the results can be disconcerting. After you use System Restore to roll back your system to a previous configuration, you may discover that the utility wiped out executable files, scripts, dynamic link libraries (DLLs), TrueType fonts, and Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF) files that were stored outside of your My Documents folder and that had been downloaded after the date of the restore point you selected. If you routinely download programs or create PDF files in a non-protected location, you may want to specifically declare that location to be exempt from System Restore monitoring. To do so, you must add a value to the registry. Follow these steps:
Open Registry Editor (Regedit.exe) and select the following key:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToBackup
Choose Edit, New, Multi-String Value.

Give the new value a name that describes the location you’re about to specify: My Downloads, for instance.

Double-click the newly created value. Enter the full path of the folder you want to protect from monitoring and then click OK.

Note that the change you just made will not go into effect until after you set your next restore point manually or Windows creates a system checkpoint. Therefore, it’s good practice to set a fresh restore point after making changes.

If you ever receive a "low disk space" warning for any drive, check your System Restore settings immediately. The utility will shut down on its own if free disk space drops below 200 MB on any single partition. When this happens, you receive no warning. The only indication appears when you open the System Restore properties dialog box, where each drive letter’s status is listed as Suspended.

Windows will not turn System Restore back on automatically. To do so manually, try the following workaround:
From Control Panel, open the System tool and click the System Restore tab.
Select the Turn Off System Restore On All Drives option and click Apply. This completely shuts down System Restore.

Clear the Turn Off System Restore On All Drives option and click Apply. The Status column for each drive changes to Monitoring, an indication that System Restore is working again.

From the Available Drives list, select the entry for any drive that you want to exclude from System Restore protection and click the Settings button.

Select the Turn Off System Restore On This Drive option, and click OK. Repeat for other drives you want to exclude from System Restore.
Click OK to close the System Restore dialog box.
If the drive that produced the "low disk space" warning is normally full (as might be the case on a drive used to store a large archive of media files that never change), be sure to exclude that drive so that it doesn’t continually disable System Restore.