Win7 Can Delete All System Restore Points On Reboot

An anonymous reader writes "Astonishingly, the so-called system restore feature in Windows 7 deletes restore points without warning when the system is rebooted. This forum thread on answers.microsoft.com shows some of the users who have experienced the problem. Today I did a clean install of Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit (no dual boot), and noticed that whenever the machine rebooted after installing an application or driver, the disk churned for several minutes on the 'starting Windows' screen. Turns out that churning was the sound of my diligently created system restore points being deleted. Unfortunately I only found this out when Windows barfed at a USB dongle and I wanted to restore the system to an earlier state. This is an extraordinarily bad bug, which I suspect most Windows 7 users won't realise is affecting them until it's too late."

Not That It Matters Much...

[Nemyst]

I don't know if anyone's been in the same situation as I have, but the only times I've had to use system restore were a disaster. For virus infections, the restore data tends to be infected too, so that's useless. For restoring from bad drivers, applications, etc. the only time I had to do that I went from no network connection to BSoD on boot which took me two days to fix.

I have disabled System Restore now, and I never ever suggest using it to anyone I know.

Don't rely only on system restore

[cosm]

Yea...uh...system restore...yea. Better off using a full disk imaging utility, or using a 3rd party backup manager like Acronis or whatnot.

Can't be affecting all users

[Zouden]

I just checked and I have 9 restore points going back two weeks. I would have restarted several times in that period. The summary makes it sound as if this is a bug that affects all users. I don't think that is the case.

This is an extraordinarily bad bug, which I suspect most Windows 7 users won't realise is affecting them until it's too late.

Yeah or maybe it's not affecting most Windows 7 users.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[vistapwns]

I also have old restore points, and in multiple systems I've installed Win 7, I've looked in system restore on several of them on multiple occasions and have always seen old restore points going back passed recent reboots. I guess we need something in the wake of all those ubuntu 10.04 bugs to make windows look like the monster.

Re:How prevalent?

[The MAZZTer]

I thought I had this, but then I double checked and realized I had my system restore max space set to 700mb. My single restore point was taking up 555mb of this. I upped the space. Maybe some people are being too over zealous with cranking down the space? (I forgot how much it took up when I set it I guess.)

[Edit: Looks like the accepted solution on that thread simply increases the space allocated to System Restore! I could be right, maybe?]

Re:How prevalent?

[camperdave]

It is impolite, if not rude, not to throw up a warning message or error message, though. You never delete data without giving the user a chance to say no.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[TechForensics]

I'm not sure even tools like Acronis are really safe since they run under, and are subject to restrictions imposed by Windows. For example using Easeus Partition Manager to clone the boot partition of your main drive to another clean drive will not produce a bootable disk, even if you copy the hidden boot partition (whose raison d'etre M$ claims is bitlocker). I don't believe anything that runs under Windows will make a perfect duplicate of your boot disk-- if you want to have a spare drive in your desk that can be swapped in for your failed C:\ drive without a hiccup, do what I do and boot your system from, say, a FreeBSD Live DVD (I use PC-BSD) and use dd. That is as good as you can get, and I've proven it works (just don't boot the system with your clone installed alongside your boot drive). (Of course, be sure both drives are the same kind, i.e. PATA, SATA or SCSI.) (Note: Most Live Linux and Unix discs will not complete booting from a SATA optical drive-- not sure why. You must use PATA.)

dd if=/dev/ad0 of=/dev/ad1 bs=4096 conv=noerror (with Unix it's as easy as that, though the disk names in your system may be different). If you are going to do this, be sure your destination drive is the same size, or larger than, the source drive, even if you're only interested in copying the first couple of partitions (the partition table will be wrong, and that will cause an error, unless all partitions are present). What I haven't confirmed yet is whether you can shrink all partitions on your source drive so their combined size is smaller than a destination drive that's smaller than the source so that the partition table on the destination drive won't refer to areas beyond its physical boundaries, but logically, that should work. (How about cloning your C:\ drive to a nice (but smaller) solid-state replacement drive?)

It's too bad M$ doesn't make a more capable OS, but we know why they don't.

Windows won't go away by mocking it

[h00manist]

Got to be smarter than that. I dislike monopolies and MS as much as anyone, but finding problems and publicizing them will only help test it and reduce QA labor costs for Microsoft. It won't make people not use it, or wonder if Linux or anything else is better. Testing some programs for Linux will be better, talking to people managing various projects, writing user manuals for a few programs. Wine HQ has lots of programs that need testing and installation instructions. Questioning copyrights and patents could get some results, campaigning for legislation change. But just bashing Microsoft and saying "in Linux it is better" won't do much.

Re:How prevalent?

[slimjim8094]

Are you kidding me? /tmp is TEMPORARY! It's transient - that's the whole point!

Programs that store data of ANY permanence in /tmp are broken. People who store data of ANY permanence in /tmp are foolish.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Mashiki]

Agreed, I've restarted over a dozen times due to me mucking around and changing stuff via the registry. I've got 9 restore points going back to the 5th of april.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[paulwye]

I don't believe anything that runs under Windows will make a perfect duplicate of your boot disk-- if you want to have a spare drive in your desk that can be swapped in for your failed C:\ drive without a hiccup,

Nope, Acronis (and I assume others as well--I specify Acronis because it was mentioned, and I use it) disk images can be used to do a bare-metal restore in the event of software or disk failure. You'd need either (a) previously-created rescue media, or (b) another machine with Acronis and (i) a spare SATA/IDE port or (ii) a USB disk enclosure. Works like a charm. In fact, IIRC, the replacement disk doesn't even need to be of the same size, except under certain circumstances.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[Enderandrew]

It is easier to push updates to Linux boxes, except those updates aren't just a small smattering of MS updates, but rather for every application installed on the box.

There are some nice virtues to Microsoft's myriad of enterprise tools. But suggesting that Windows boxes are easier to manage for software updates is not one of them.

Then again, one can also argue that instead of fucking with group policy and MS exploit patches, you could just run Linux and run secure boxes that are far easier to secure in the first place.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[Enderandrew]

I've used Ghost and Clonezilla to make replacement bootable hard drives just fine. I can't imagine Acronis really fails in this regard, or it wouldn't be taken seriously.

Re:System restore! So we meet again, my nemesis!

[Anonymous Coward]

It helped me once. Windows update suggested a driver update for my mouse. (Yes, I know, it was silly to bother with a mouse driver update in the first place, but I figured, what could go wrong with a WHQL-certified driver for a USB mouse?) The new mouse driver caused bluescreens during boot. A system restore got rid of it.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[gandhi_2]

you are a pussy, AC.

AD is ldap + bind + all the ldap client software + stuff linux doesn't have like gpos + ability to integrate with wsus, exchange, forefront, etc.

AD is BASED ON ldap, sure enough. it's way more than that.

Re:How prevalent?

[spongman]

i don't know about you but i prefer to be alone while i'm taking a dump, and I generally flush before opening the door. so, if someone is in there with me flushing before i leave, then i'd probably be a little pissed.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:How prevalent?

[deniable]

LKG isn't System Restore. It simply rolls back part of the registry (HKEY_SYSTEM/Current Control Set) to the last time it booted successfully. Any damage to HKEY_Software or the file system isn't covered. I've also had things crash after it decided that the current CCS is good, making the next reboot a pain. It's mostly there to deal with buggy newly installed drivers.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[siride]

Be careful. Git doesn't track file permissions and ownership, which, unlike in most repos, is actually pretty darn important for /etc.

Re:How prevalent?

[Mistlefoot]

15% of disk space is the default size.

The point of system restore is to ensure that if you mess up your computer with recent updates or changes you have an easy restoration option. So, on a typical new PC with 1TB you would have 150GB. Per the grandparent, a typical restore was taking 555mb for him. You do the math.

Now to assume that a user will be prompted on every single boot or system change after the limit is pretty silly when this will almost only ever affect someone who has changed from the default value. Users who leave this setting to default will never suffer this fate.

It seems that the submitter of the article has "tweaked" his machine so much that he only saves 1 restore point and therefore waits EVERY boot for the system restore to do what it should do.

Re:How prevalent?

[iPhr0stByt3]

Just to help you understand: "Last known good configuration" is a copy of your registry (or rather a subset thereof) at the point of your last successful log in. If you log in successfully, but something does not work, then the "last known good configuration" was just saved and is of no use in that situation. This is NOT system restore.
System restore is more than just the registry. If you cannot login (even after trying "last known good configuration"), then you can try system restore by booting off of the OS CD/DVD and "repairing" your installation. If you log in successfully and something does not work, then you can also try system restore. And yes, system restore WILL fix your computer by bringing it to an older state at which everything worked, given that: 1) you don't have hardware issues 2) a virus has not infested your restore points and 3) you have restore points before the problem started.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[jabbathewocket]

Experienced Power Users do not reinstall windows all the time because of unfixable errors, they do it because they are incompetent boobs who think all things require a reinstall to fix OR because they are tired of "fixing" an idiots computer for the 37th time due to "i turned off the antivirus because the thing i downloaded from limewire told me to" The whole "the only way to fix it is to reinstall" is extremely rare since XP, and anyone saying otherwise clearly is not quite the experienced power user they think they are.. more likely they have just enough knowledge to do things they really don't understand, and hosed their computer with their stupidity. That behavior is not OS dependant and is just as likely to happen under any and all OS, even Linux.

Re:How prevalent?

[Hognoxious]

Several times windows update has borked internet access outside the local subnet[1]. In one of the cases it wouldn't even connect to MS, so it couldn't fix itself. Rolling back to a restore point did the trick. I then waited a few days till the fix for the fix was out...

P.S. I have it set to "Check, but ask before installing". Anyone else find that sometimes it just goes ahead and does it?

[1] I think it does this when there's a pending update for IE.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[IRoll11!s]

Tired of this misconception. Seriously. I've been using Windows software for 14 years, and I have NEVER had to do a full system reinstall. EVER. People who need to reinstall Windows all of the time are doing something really really wrong. I'm not sure what, nor do I care. I'm not a zealot, Windows sucks in more ways than I can shake a stick at. I've done my fair share of cursing and screaming at it over the last decade and a half, but there hasn't been a damn thing I haven't been able to fix without the need to reinstall the whole thing.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Can't be affecting all users

[DavidD_CA]

I have 14 restore points dating back to 3/29/2010 which is about when I installed Windows 7 on this machine.

A quick Bing search brought me to another thread where the guy's problem turned out to be a disk defrag utility that was deleting restore points on reboot. He disabled the utility, and the restores stopped disappearing.

For what it's worth, does a forum post from January with a total of five people reporting a problem really deserve to be on Slashdot? Oh wait, it's anti-MS. Nevermind.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[caluml]

tar zcvf `date '+%Y%m%d'`_configs.tgz /etc

Try date +%F for more concisosity. I made that word up, btw.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[kitgerrits]

it is pretty easy to do stuff like point an entire OU to a WSUS server and specify how updates are done.

Apparently, you haven't heard of Red Hat Network or Satellite Server.
It allows you to place all systems in groups and apply specific update packages to those groups.

Network Bare Metal Installation is blazing fast with PXE boot and kickstart.
System configuration can be completely automated with cfEngine or Puppet.

Even without these tools, basic scripting knowledge allows you to do this with pre-installed tools or little helper apps like clusterSSH

I admit all of the above tools have a rather steep learning curve, but they are fully customizable.
The only limit of these tools is your imagination.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Anonymous Coward]

if the defragmentation utility does not play nice with the system restore utility"

Not "the" defragmentation utility, "a" defragmentation utility. This (having searched and found the same thread) was some third party utility that did some "clean up" before defragging, not the one that comes with the system.

But obviously Slashdot readers believe Microsoft is to blame for any software that runs on Windows.

1 thing the mods here understand, is this... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"Biased Journalism sells more... magazines" - Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias, from "The Watchmen"

It's really in the site owner's best interests to most likely FOSTER this ongoing "Linux vs. Windows" type sentiment around here, and the reasoning's quite simple - material that generates arguments online, means more people come view and post (and perhaps even join) the forums here... which in turn, means more page hits/views, which = "mo' money" for the owners of /.!

(Pretty simple/in a nutshell)

APK

P.S.=> Are they actually DOING that (fostering this type of sentiment around here)? I don't know, but, it would make a LOT of sense from the site owner's perspective @ least, to actually do so, for the purposes of monetary gain via website page hits adbanner monetary generation! apk

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[ari_j]

All heat on kdawson is well-deserved. Find a counterexample if you think there is one. I haven't noticed it yet, though.