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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."
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.
Yea...uh...system restore...yea. Better off using a full disk imaging utility, or using a 3rd party backup manager like Acronis or whatnot.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
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.
Yeah or maybe it's not affecting most Windows 7 users.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
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?]
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.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
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.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
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.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
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.
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.
THL phish sticks
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
Be careful. Git doesn't track file permissions and ownership, which, unlike in most repos, is actually pretty darn important for /etc.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
Nope. I have run into this bug, and I have 20Gb set for SR. I figured it was a dual boot issue, as I noticed whenever I booted into XP32 and then back to W7 x64 my SR points went bye bye.
For those that have a single boot I would recommend Comodo Time Machine as I have been using this for quite awhile and it works great. Unfortunately it doesn't like how W7 changes partition letters on the fly, so if you dual boot with W7 installed on anything other than C: it won't work. But if you are running single boot XP/Vista/W7, it is a great tool to use and much better than SR IMHO.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
tar zcvf `date '+%Y%m%d'`_configs.tgz /etc
Try date +%F for more concisosity. I made that word up, btw.
Get your own free personal location tracker
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.
"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
"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