A few years ago, I was a freelancer at a native English-speaking company trying to develop a US market for highly obscure hardware products and fine-tuning the text on its site. Everything was going fine until my second week on the job and when I went to the site I suddenly realized that I was seeing strange ads flashing on my screen and losing the ability to access my security software.
I needed to get rid of everything that was invading my system. Hopefully I won’t have to reset my computer (and lose more time reinstalling all my apps and files). But I had an alternative: use System Restore.
System Restore is a useful feature that takes a kind of snapshot of your computer’s software, registry, and driver configuration at a specific time, called a restore point. Then you can bring your computer back to that point if needed. You may lose some of the work you have done since creating this restore point, but you will also lose any unwanted changes that may have been made without your permission.
In past versions of Windows, I haven’t had much success with restore points, but System Restore has improved over the years, as have many features of the operating system. And it can be very handy in an emergency.
Install System Restore
To use System Restore, you must first enable it and create a restore point.
- Go to the search field on your taskbar and type “system restore” which will bring up “Create a restore point” as the best match. Click on it.
- This will open the System Properties window (it will look pretty old-fashioned compared to most of Windows 10’s current interface). You will be in the System Protection tab. If you have never used System Restore before, all buttons except “Configure” will be grayed out. Make sure your available drive (usually the C: drive) is highlighted, then click “Configure”.
- Under “Restore Settings” select “Turn on system protection”. If you want, you can choose the maximum disk space to use for your restore points; after that, the old ones will be deleted to make room. Usually, 1 GB to 5 GB is sufficient, depending on the size of your hard drive. Click “OK”.
- You will be returned to the System Properties windows. It’s a good idea to create a new restore point right away, so click the “Create…” button.
- Name your restore point in the pop-up window and click “Create”. After a minute or two, you should see another popup that says “Restore point created successfully”. Click “Close”.
And you’re done! Note that new restore points are only created when: According to Microsoft, “you have installed a new application, driver, or Windows update.” Also, you can follow the instructions above every time you want to create a restore point manually. For example, if you are about to do something experimental with your system. (There are ways your computer will automatically create a restore point every time it boots up, but that involves working with the computer’s registry; this article will only cover the basics.)
Use a restore point
Let’s say you installed a new game and then it started spreading ads and other nasty stuff to your system. It’s time to use your restore point to go back to a time before you made this mistake.
- Go to the search field on your taskbar and type “system restore” which will bring up “Create a restore point” as the best match. Click on it.
- Again, you’ll find yourself in the System Properties window and the System Protection tab. This time, click on “System Restore…”.
- You will see a popup titled “Restore system files and settings”. Click Next.
- You get a list of all the various restore points created, including the date and time they were created, their names, and whether they were created manually. Choose which one you want to return to.
- If you want (and it’s a good idea), click “Scan for affected programs”. This will give you a list of which programs will be deleted and which can be automatically restored. Close the windows and then click Next.
- The final confirmation window will show you the restore point you have chosen, the drive it will affect, and if you have recently changed your Windows password, a password reset disk using a USB drive. You will also have one more chance to scan for affected programs. Click “Finish” to start the process.
