How to use System Restore in Windows Vista

Restore points can be created prior to making a change on your Windows Vista computer – many applications will even automatically create a restore point prior to making a change. Should the change go bad, you will have the option of rolling the change back so your system will perform as it did before the change was made.

By enabling System Restore Points, a small portion of your hard drive will be reserved for storing restore points. As long as there is space in this reserve, your restore points will remain available. Once the reserve space is fully used, the oldest restore points will be deleted to make room for new ones. System Restore may use up to 15% of your hard drive.

This section will walk you through enabling System Restore.

1) Click on the Start button and then click on Control Panel.

2) Go to System and Maintenance, System, System Protection

3) In the System Properties window on the System Protection Tab you will see a list of your partitions – typically listed as “Local Disk (C:)”. Note that you may have more than one partition. It is recommended that you enable Restore Points for each partition or hard drive you have installed.

4) Click OK. You’ve successfully enabled System Restore Points.

Note that you need to have at least 300MB of disk space free and the hard drive must be 1GB or larger in order for Vista to create a restore point.

Follow these steps to create a restore point.

1) Click on the Start button and then click on Control Panel.

2) Go to System and Maintenance, System, System Protection

3) Click on the “Create…” button on the System Properties, System Protection Tab.

4) Enter a brief description – something that will help you remember the state of your computer at the time of the restore point. Click Create.

5) Your first restore point will take a few minutes to create. Subsequent restore points should be created quicker. Click OK on the dialog box when it appears stating that the restore point had been created.