Overview of System Restore in Windows 7
If the Turn on System Protection option is greyed out or missing on your Windows computer, maybe System Restore is disabled by your system administrator. You may also use the Enable-ComputerRestore. Right click on the Start button, and select System. On the left part of the “System” windows, look for a link which says “System protection.” Click to open it. Switch to System Protection tab.
System Restore is a built-in feature in Microsoft Windows that allows the user to reverttheir computer's state (including system files, installed applications, WindowsRegistry, and system settings) to that of a previous point in time. It can be used to restore computer toearlier data if your computer runs into issues.
By default, System Restore is turned on in all versions of Windows 7 including Home Premium,Ultimate and Professional. However, you may encounter System Restore greyed out issue orsomething alike. In other words, System Restore is disabled and you cannot turn it on. Toturn on System Restore in Windows 7, you have to fix this issue first.
How to fix System Restore greyed out in Windows 7
One of the possible reasons is that your systemrestore is disabled by your system administrator. You can try the methods below to solvethis issue.
Turn on system restore Windows 7 via Group Policy Editor
1. Type gpedit.msc at Search Box and press Enter. This will open the Group Policy Editor.Then navigate to the following setting:
Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > System Restore.
2. Look “Turn Off System Restore” setting. Double click on it and set it to Not configured orDisabled.
3. Click on Apply and exit.
4. Restart and you will find the System Restore has been enabled.
Turn on system restore Windows 7 via Registry Editor
1. Press Win + R to bring up the ‘Run’ dialog box. In it, type regedit.exe and hit Enter.
System Protection Windows 10
2. Then, navigate to the following key in the left pane of the Registry Editor window:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Policies Microsoft Windows NT SystemRestore.
3. Delete the value DisableConfig and DisableSR.
How to turn on System Restore in Windows 7?
After fixing System Restore will not turn on in Windows 7 issue, you can go to see if you canenable system restore in Windows 7.
1. Go to the Control Panel, click System and then choose System Protection.
2. Here comes to System Properties interface. Click the System Protection tab.
3. Click Configure, and select “Turn on system protection”. Then Click OK.
Note: As restore points are created regularly, it will take a large amount of space on yourcomputer. To prevent low disk space issue, it is a goodidea to adjust the maximum disk space used for system protection. As space fills up, theolder restore points will be deleted automatically to make room for new ones.
How to turn on System Restore Windows 7 via command line
You can also enable system restore from Windows command line by modifying the relevantregistry keys.
To turn on System Restore from command line, run the command: sc configsrservice start= Auto
To disable System Restore Windows 7 via command line, run the command: scconfig srservice start= disabled
Supplementary protection for your computer
Actually, to have a comprehensive protection for your computer, simply turning on SystemRestore in Windows 7 is not enough. As you know, System Restore will not restore yourpersonal files and other data, so it cannot be regarded as data backup. Besides, as restorepoints are saved on the corresponding volume, you will lose all your restore points if thevolume corrupted. What’s more, system protection can only be turned on for drives that areformatted using the NTFS file system.
Therefore, to have supplementary protect for your computer, you should create a full systemimage backup. Create macos el capitan bootable usb.
AOMEI Backupper Standard is a free backup and restoresoftware which allows you to create a full system image backup. The image backup willprotect everything on C drive including your personal files and other data. It supports youto backup system to a safer place like external hard drive, NAS, cloud drive, etc. And itwill protect any File System detected by Windows instead of only NTFS.
With AOMEI Backupper, you can create incremental backups or differential backups to alwayskeep your data backup updated without taking much disk space. With its user-friendlyinterface, you will not feel any difficulty during the operation even you are a green hand.You can follow these steps to create an image backup to get supplementary protection foryour computer.
Step 1. Free download, install and run AOMEI Backupper. At themain interface, click System Backup under Backup tab.
Step 2. For system image backup, it will automatically choose the source path for you, andyou only need to choose a destination path.
Step 3. You can click Option to enable encryption and email notification,and set the compression level for your backup. You can also click Scheduleto set automatic backup.
Step 4. After all this done, Click Start Backup.
After creating system backup, you can click Restore at the main interface of AOMEI Backupperto restore your system to the previous state if there is any problem with your system. Ifyou want to deploy your system image to multiple computers within LAN, you will need the image deployment software AOMEI ImageDeploy (AID).
Conclusion
To make a summary, turning on System Restore in Windows 7 is not enough to protect yourcomputer, you still need supplementary protection. AOMEI Backupper is a perfect choice. Withsystem image backup created by AOMEI Backupper, you can easily restore your computer to aprevious state even when your computer is unbootable.
Besides system backup, you can have other flexible backup choices like disk backup, partition backup, file backup. If youwant to protect your whole disk, you can choose to create disk backup.
About system restore point in Windows 10
System restore point in Windows 10 holds important system files like registry keys on aspecified data. System restore point can be used to restore your system to its early point.And when your computer is unbootable, you can try to fix this problem by restoring yoursystem in Safe Mode using restore point. And it is advised to check the affected programsbefore restoring system.
Unable to create system restore point in Windows 10
Situation 1: I have a computer running Windows 10 and I intended to create asystem restore point, so that I can restore my computer to previous state. But when rightclicked “This PC”, went to “Prosperities” > “SystemProtection”, I found out that the option of “Create…” wasgrayed out.
Situation 2: I plan to create a system restore point in Windows 10. However,I failed to create system restore point and received an error that “The restore point couldnot be created for the following reason: Access is denied. (0x8007005).” Then I rebooted mycomputer and tried to restore point again, but I still received the same error message. Howcan I fix this issue? Is there anyone can help me?
Four ways to fix “Cannot create restore point in Windows 10”
In fact, apart from “Access is denied” error, it is possible to see other errors like “Therestore point could not be created for the following reason: The specified object was notfound” during creating restore point. Since system restore point plays an important role, itis worthwhile finding out solutions when you failed to create restore point in Windows 10.In fact, unable to create restore point can be caused by many events and you can try thetricks given below according to your situation.
Fix 1: Turn on system protection
If you turn off the system protection, the option of “Create…” will begrayed out. Do as the following steps to turn on system protection.
1. In System Protection interface, select system drive and click “Configure…”icon.
2. In the pop-up window, choose “Turn on system protection” and click “Ok”.
Fix 2: Enable system restore via Group Policy Editor
In System Protection interface, if you happen to see that both “Create…” and“Configure…” grayed out, you can fix this issue using Group Policy Editor.
1. Press Windows + R simultaneously to open Run box.
2. In Run box, type “gpedit.msc” and hit “Enter” to open Group Policy Editor.
3. Under Computer Configuration, go to “Administrative Templates” >“System” > “System Restore”.
4. Then, you can check the state of Turn off Configuration & Turnoff System Restore. If any of them is in Enabled State, double click it and choose'Not Configured'.
Fix 3: Start Volume Shadow Copy service
When “Create…” option is available and you finally fail to create restorepoint and receive an error message, you can take steps as follows:
1. Open Run box and input “services.msc” and hit “Enter” to run Windows Services.
2. Find out the service named Volume Shadow Copy. Start it if it is notrunning; Stop and Restart it if it is running.
3. Make sure that the Startup type is 'Automatic'.
Fix 4: Run SFC/Scannow command
Windows system files corrupted can also cause the failure of creating restore point. You canuse SFC utility to check and fixcorrupted system files. The detailed steps are listed below:
1. In Startup box, type “cmd”, right click “Command Prompt” and choose “Run asadministrator”.
2. In this window, type “sfc /scannow” and press “Enter” key.
Pleas wait patiently for this process to finish. If lucky, then you are able to createrestore point in Windows 10.
A better way to protect your computer
System restore point can help you to restore system to an early point. But after systemrestore, some programs like antivirus tool might be affected. And System restore point can’thelp you to remove virus or malware; if the volume that holds system restore point iscorrupted, it will not work. In such circumstance, it is wise to make a full backup of yoursystem.
Here I recommend you AOMEIBackupper, a powerful and comprehensive backup tool for Windows 10/8/7, XP and Vista. Itallows you to create system image backup and restore it to a new hard drive if your currentdrive dies. With three image compression levels for you to choose, you are capable of savingdisk space. Let’s see how it works:
Turn On System Protection Greyed Out Restore
Step 1. Free download AOMEI Backupper Standard, install and run it.
Step 2. In the main interface, go to “Backup” >“System Backup”.
Step 3. This software will choose source partition automatically for you.Select another location as the destination path.
System Restore
Notes:
☞The destination path can be an internal hard drive, externalhard drive or NAS. It is recommended to backup system to external hard drive or NAS.
☞Youcan set scheduled backup by clicking “Schedule” button. There are five types for you tochoose: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Event Triggers and Real-time Sync. But Event Triggers andReal-time Sync are not available in Standard Version. If you want to use the two schedules,you can upgradeAOEMI Backupper to Professional Version.