Using Windows 7 or Vista System Restore

Using Windows 7 or Vista System Restore

Windows 7 and Vista has a feature called System Restore that automatically backs up registry and system files whenever you install new software or drivers. This feature is useful when you install evil software that makes your computer run really slow. But don’t worry, System Restore won’t remove Windows Vista.

Using System Restore in Windows

There are two places that you can use the system restore feature from. From within Windows, you can just type restore into the Start menu search box, and you’ll immediately see System Restore at the top of the start menu:
Or you can type rstrui into the search box and hit enter. Your choice.

You will immediate see a screen where you can choose to roll back the system to the last restore point. You can select “Recommended restore”, and just click next, or you can choose a different restore point.
If you do choose a different restore point, you will see a list of restore points that you can choose from. How many times have I typed the word choose at this point?

You’ll notice in the screenshot below that the last thing I did was install Virtual CloneDrive to mount ISO images, but right before that I installed the NVIDIA drivers.

Click one of them, and you will have to confirm and then restart your computer to roll the system back.
Note: For best results, you should run System Restore from safe mode.

If you receive an error while restoring, then use it from safe mode and it should work fine. To get into Safe mode, you can reboot and use the F8 key right before Windows starts up.

If Your System Won’t Boot

Click next on the next screen, and then choose System Restore from the System Recovery dialog. It will take a few seconds to come up, and you will see the same screen that you would see in Windows:

Click next, and on the next screen select the drive that your copy of Windows 7 or Vista is installed on.

Click Finish, and Windows will roll back to the previous restore point. Really pretty simple stuff.

Conclusion

I’d absolutely recommend keeping the system restore feature on in Windows 7 or Vista.