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For a considerable time now I have been unable to use System Restore without going first into Safe Mode. The latest problem is that even in safe mode, any attempt to 'System Restore' fails and all Restore Points are deleted.

Any advice please?

Hi deejayden - Welcome to PCHF!

Sorry to ask to obvious but is system restore enabled.

Also how much free space do you have left on your hard drive. If you don't have enough free space system restore won't work properly. To check how much hard drive space you have left click Start > My computer > right click c: drive > select properties.

Do you have enough space allocated for system restore to use. To check this click Start > Control Panel > System > select System Restore tab > highlight your hard drive > click setting. I recommend having this set on max.

As you've had the problem it may be hard for you to remember back that far - but did you install new programs, etc around the time the problem first started appearing.

Hi DIIRE

Thanks for your very prompt response to my posting.

In answer to your questions:-

Yes, System Restore is enabled and Status shows as 'Monitoring' Drive C.

My Hard Drive is not partitioned and has 27.2GB used space and 121GB free space.

Your third question may reveal the problem! I carry out weekly and monthly maintenance on my system and the latter includes running the full health check diagnostice from PCPitstop. I also keep a maintainance log of all significant events as, in my mid seventies, I cannot rely on memory.

Looking back at this log I find that the System Restore problems appeared in January 2007 when I disabled SR to clear all restore points after eliminating a virus. When I then enabled it I reduced the allocated HD space for SR from 6% to 5% (7.44GB). I did this because feedback from PCPitstop's analysis of my system was that I had too much space allocated to SR and that it should be reduced, ideally to less than 2GB!

In February this year, having again been advised that I was allocating too much space to SR. I checked and found that 1% (2.01GB) only gave a month of restore points so I set it at 3% (3.83GB) which gave about 2.5 months.

In view of your advice I have now reset Systen Restore space allocation back to 6% (9.25GB), the value at which it last worked correctly, and will set up a new restore point and will check the operation of System Restore in a couple of days and report results.

Hello again DIIRE

With the new setting of 6% (9.25GB) for System Restore space on the hard drive I have attempted, in normal mode, to restore to a point set yesterday. The system went through the motions but then gave the message 'Restoration Incomplete - Your computer cannot be restored to 01 August 2008...........No changes have been made......

I then tried the same restore in Safe Mode and this time the system restored to the selected restore point successfully!

In both cases the earlier Restore Points remained intact.

Any further advice will be appreciated.