I Turned Off Windows System Restore

I Finally Turned Off Windows System Restore.

Since I started routinely Imaging the Windows System Partition of my Windows XP Pro PC’s I had been doing Imaging as follows:

Monthly Full Image:

Prior to doing the Full Image I would make sure that all software is up-to-date, defragment the partition, and run Windows Disk Cleanup including delete all but the most recent Windows Restore Point.

Weekly Differential Image:

Prior to doing each Differential Image I would make sure that all software is up-to-date and run Windows Disk Cleanup including delete all but the most recent Windows Restore Point.

I have not been happy with the file size of the Differential Images.

Now that Windows System Restore is Turned Off, I plan to do Differential Images at least three times per week and continue doing the monthly Full Image.

My Differential Images should be much smaller now and restoring an Image should be much more reliable than using Windows System Restore. I have not used Windows System Restore in years and have concluded that Windows Restore Points are a “waste of space”.

 

I would agree on XP, but on Vista and 7, SR is much more powerful and also keep file revisions. In some cases this can be handy.

 

System Restore has its uses. It has bailed me out a few times. Especially at work.

But at home, I turned it off long ago. Images were just so much more reliable (with no negatives after almost 4 years.)

 

Agreed. Although in my case I am testing out Rollback RX. Seems like a perfect solution to quickly protect my desktop before the kids go on it.

 

Rollback Rx should automatically turn off Windows System Restore, but for Windows 7 it has a bug and sometimes it doesn't. Check to see if it is turned off, if it isn't then you have to manually turn it off.

Best regards,

KOR!

 

one of the first things i do is turn it off on my systems

 

One of the first things I do is to Completely remove it

 

system restore uses unnecessary resource and hd space. Some malwares can return from system restore..i always turn off system restore..

-http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=173363-
-http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/benefits-disabling-system-restore-

 

I run into malware/virus infested System Restore points all the time at work. Huge pain and so hard to clean up.

 

Since you said that restore points are infested, you could just disable it and enable it again, that way, all the restore points will be gone, what is hard about that? lol

 

For a few reasons...in a corporate environment most System Restore settings are controlled by GPO and therefore not settings you can change without a registry hack that often you can't do either because of system security. Even if you can implment the registry hack, often there is something outside of System Restore that the AV won't catch that reinfects new restore points. For starters.