How to Enable System Restore in Windows 7

A way to undo system changes without affecting personal files

Before you install more programs and drivers on your newly installed Windows 7 PC, make sure you have System Protection enabled. System protection is a feature that regularly creates and saves information about your computer’s system files and registry.

System protection also saves previous versions of files that you’ve modified. It saves these files in restore points, which are created just before significant system events, such as the installation of a program or device driver. By default System protection is automatically on for the drive that Windows is installed on. System protection can only be turned on for drives that are formatted using the NTFS file system.

To check if you have the protection turned on go to the Control Panel, clickSystemthen chooseSystem Protection.

TheSystem Propertiesdialog will appear. Click theSystem Protectiontab. Look for the drive marked withSystem– this is the drive where Windows 7 is installed. The protection for this drive is on by default – if not, click it to turn it on. You may turn on the system protection of other non-system disks if you like. If you do this, you can restore previous versions of files inside those drives.

Click theConfigurebutton to see the restore settings and maximum space used by the restore points. If you have a large amount of space on your computer, it’s a good idea to choose theRestore system settings and previous versions of filesoption and to set theMax Usagepercentage so that it’s greater than 5 GB in size.

If you want to see the restore points created by your system, click theSystemRestorebutton.

The list of restore points will appear. You may go to this list in the future if you need to restore from one of the available restore points.

System Restore is a way to undo system changes to your computer without affecting your personal files, such as email, documents, or photos. System Restore is the best choice if you installed a program or driver that caused an unexpected change to your computer and uninstalling the program or driver didn’t fix the problem.

If you’ve been using system restore for some time and youdon’t see all the restore points you created, check out my articles onmissing restore points in Windows. If you have any questions about system restore, post them in the comments. Enjoy!

Founder of Help Desk Geek and managing editor. He began blogging in 2007 and quit his job in 2010 to blog full-time. He has over 15 years of industry experience in IT and holds several technical certifications.Read Aseem’s Full Bio

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How to Enable System Restore in Windows 7#