Welcome back to your free Windows 7 training course. In the previous video I looked at
how to recover lost data files or the complete system if the hard disk were to crash. In
some cases you may install a problematic driver or application that causes the system to become
unstable. In most cases you will simply remove the driver or uninstall the application. In
some cases you may not be able to do this as the application or driver may refuse to
uninstall. When this occurs you could restore your system using a backup but this is quite
a drastic step.
Windows 7 offers an alternative to restoring the system and files called system protection.
System protection has essentially two components. The first saves system settings. This includes
the registry and system files and programs.
The next part of system protection is previous versions. This saves changes to documents
including when documents have been deleted. If you are familiar with previous operating
systems, you may have seen the previous versions feature called shadow copies or just previous
versions.
In this video I will look at restoring the system back to a previous snap shot. In the
next video I will look at how to use system protection to restore the previous version
of your documents.
System protection works by creating a snap shot of the system called a restore point.
The restore point can be used to restore the system state or document changes. For example,
you could restore the system to a time before you installed a particular piece of software
or driver or restore a file you accidentally deleted.
System protection does not replace the need for regular backups as it only keeps a copy
of changes in a cache. Once the cache is full the oldest entry is removed to make room for
new changes.
In order for system protection to work it creates a restore point. A restore point is
a snap shot of the system at a certain time. System restore points contain registry, system
settings and documents changes.
If you decide to recover the system to a previously created restore point, the recovery does not
affect any documents. Only the system files, registry and applications are affected. The
idea behind system restore points is that if your computer becomes unusable or unstable,
the restore point allows you to restore the system back to a time where it was working
correctly.
Restore points are created automatically by Windows. By default they are created on startup,
midday or when a significant system changes occurs. For example, a significant system
change could be when a new piece of software or a Windows Update is installed on the computer.
When you have installed software before, you may have noticed in the status of the setup
a message telling you that a restore point was being created before the install started.
Restore points are also automatically created when you install or update device drivers
on the system that are not WHQL drivers. WHQL drivers or Windows Hardware Quality Labs are
drivers that have been tested by Microsoft to ensure that they meet a certain standard.
These drivers should not crash the system or cause it to become unstable.
Without further ado, I will change to my Windows 7 computer to demonstrate how to use restore
points to restore the system state.
First of all, open the control panel and then select system and security. From here select
the option system to bring up the properties for the system. From system select the option
on the left hand side system protection. This will open the system properties and automatically
select the system protection tab.
The system protection tab shows all the current settings used for restore points. If I press
the button system restore, this will launch the system restore wizard. Once past the welcome
screen, I will get a list of all the restore points on the system.
At the top is a restore point for Windows update. When a Windows Update is installed
a restore point is automatically created before the update is installed in case the update
causes a problem. Of course you can simply uninstall the update, but a restore point
gives you a way of removing the update if something goes wrong and you can’t uninstall
the update.
The next restore points are for software. Most software will create a restore point
when it is installed. Older software may not create a restore point. At the bottom, notice
that a restore point has been created automatically.
If you want to show more restore points, select the option show more restore points. Before
you restore your system from a restore point you may want to know what effect restoring
from a restore point will have. If I select the option scan for affected programs this
will show the effects of restoring from this restore point.
Even though this restore point was created when Microsoft Office was installed, at the
top you can see all the other programs that will be deleted as well. Remember that a restore
point will recover your system back to an earlier time. After Microsoft Office was installed,
all these programs were installed and will also be removed.
At the bottom of the screen is a list of all the drivers that will also be removed if a
restore is performed using this restore point. You can see why it is best to use the uninstall
option if it is available but sometimes you may not have a choice. For example, if your
system gets heavily infected with malware you may need to take the restore back to before
it was infected.
If I go back now to the last screen, I will select a different restore point that will
have less of an effect on my system and move on.
Once I finish the wizard I will get a dialog telling me not to interrupt the system restore
once it has started. The process takes a while to complete so I will speed the process up
so we don’t have to wait.
Once done, Windows will reboot and I will be able to log back in again. Windows will
give a dialog stating that the system restore was completed and remind me that my documents
were not affected.
Now that I have restored the system, I will go back into system protection and have a
look at the different settings that can be configured for system protection. Notice that
if I press system protection again the wizard will automatically ask if I want to restore
the system to an undo restore point. This restore point was automatically created when
the system was restored. If you find that restoring the system made things worse you
can always use this restore point to go back to what you had.
If I now go back to the properties for system protection, notice that I have an extra hard
disk on this system. Currently system protection is not enabled on this drive. To configure
protection, make sure it is selected and press configure.
At the top the first option is restore system settings and previous versions of files. When
you modify a document, system protection can keep a copy of the old document as a previous
version. In the next video, I will look at how to recover documents using this feature.
The next option configures system protection to restore only the previous version of files.
This effectively stops you from restoring the system to an earlier time if something
goes wrong. Remember that restore points saves the registry as well, so if you are planning
on making some risky registry changes it is a good idea to create a manual restore point
before you make the changes. If the drive you are configuring contains only data files
you can select the second option.
At the bottom the amount of space allocated to system protection can be configured. The
more space that is allocated the more revisions of files that can be kept and also the more
restore points that can be kept. This of course does reduce the amount of space on the hard
disk available for your files and programs. At the bottom there is a delete button if
you find you are out of space and need to reclaim the space quickly. Of course pressing
this button will remove all the data captured by system protection.
If I go back to system protection, the button create at the bottom of the screen allows
you to manually create a restore point. Once I press it, all I need to do is enter in a
description for the restore point and Windows will create a new restore point. If you are
making registry changes that won’t trigger a restore point, it is a good idea to manually
create a restore point to recover to if something goes wrong. Let’s say that you make some
changes to the registry and the system then fails to boot. You can’t login to Windows
to run the restore wizard, so what do you do?
To get around this, you can restore to a restore point using a system repair disc or the Windows
DVD. To create a system repair disc, type system repair in the start menu and select
the option create a system repair disc.
The options are the same whether you use a system repair disc or the Windows setup DVD.
In this case I will reboot the computer and boot from the Windows setup DVD. When the
computer starts up the DVD, it will detect that an OS is already installed. To boot off
the DVD press any key when asked. Otherwise Windows will boot from the hard disk.
If you get this screen, select the recovery mode option. The setup DVD will launch the
setup just like you were installing Windows. Once past the keyboard and language selection
screen, select the option at the bottom, repair your computer.
This will launch the recovery options wizard. Your operating system should automatically
be detected. If not, you may need to press the load drivers button to load additional
drivers to detect the hard disk.
On the next screen, there are a number of different recovery options to choose from.
In this case I want system restore.
The system restore wizard will start and is much the same as the wizard in Windows 7.
Once you select the restore point that you want to restore to, Windows will confirm which
drives will be affected.
Once I complete the wizard and confirm I want to continue, the system will be restored to
that earlier restore point. As you can see the process is much the same as running the
wizard in Windows 7. The difference to remember is that unlike Windows 7, a restore point
will not be created before the system is restored. If something goes wrong you will not be able
to undo the changes. If you only want to restore the system before a recent change that caused
your system to become unbootable, this will work quite well.
That’s it for restore points. In the next video I will look at how you can use system
protection to recover documents using previous versions. This has been another free video
from IT Free Training. For more videos please see our web page or YouTube channel. Thanks
for watching.