If you recently upgraded to Windows 7, you may be a bit hesitant to mess with different drivers, software, or configurations because they may cause unwanted results. It would be great if there were a way to undo any changes you made and go back in time to a period before you made any changes. With Windows 7’s Restore Points, you can do just that.
What is a Restore Point?
A Windows 7 Restore Point is about as close to a time machine as you can get when it comes to restoring your computer to a previous state. Restore Points are excellent for trying out drivers and software of which you are suspicious.
Many gamers and people who test software use Restore Points to return their computers to the most recent stable configuration. Restore Points are particularly useful for when you just reinstalled or upgraded Windows.
With a well-timed manual Restore Point, you can save yourself the time and stress of going through the reinstallation of Windows and all of your programs, settings, and changes if something goes wrong with a change you made to your computer.
Manually Create a System Restore Point in Windows 7
If you are familiar with creating manual Restore Points in Windows XP, then you will need to learn a few extra steps. As with many features in Windows 7, Restore Points are found in a different location than previous versions of Windows.
To begin, click on Start and then right-click on My Computer and select Properties from the menu.
You are now looking at a summary of your computer’s properties. On the top left-hand side of the window, click on System Protection to open up the System’s Properties Window.
Make sure you are looking at the System Protection tab and click on the Create button under the Protection Settings section of the window.
Windows 7 now asks you to name the Restore Point. It is wise to give the Restore Point a good name now to save you some trouble later. A good habit to get in to is to name your Restore Points with useful rather than general descriptions.
For example, if you are about to upgrade your video drivers and want to create a Restore Point before you upgrade, call it something like ‘Before Video Driver version 1.24’ so you know exactly why you created it. Notice that you don’t have to include a date in your description because Windows 7 will keep track of that for you.
Click on the Create button to begin creating your new Restore Point. While Windows 7 creates it, you will see the Creating a Restore Point window.
Unfortunately, Windows 7 gives you no indication of how long the creation will take. Typically, however, creating Restore Points takes between 1 and 3 minutes to complete.
When finished, Windows 7 tells you that the Restore Point was created successfully. Click on the Close button and you are done.
Creating a manual Restore Point is quite simple and is a good habit to get in to whenever you make a significant change to your system or you just want to avoid the headaches associated with uninstalling and reinstalling software, drivers, and other Windows 7 components.
With Restore Points, you can take control of your computer and restore your computer to a previous configuration when everything was working the way you wanted it to.
How can I retain all manually created restore points as the older points are automatically deleted when the maximum system restore capacity has been reached?
Exactly the same concern here as fire00. Someone please help. What is the use of creating a manual restore point and it is deleted after you update your computer just a few times? (Each time you update your system, a new restore point is automatically created and the oldest restore point is deleted.)