System Restore Disappeared

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Win v. 2282 (os build 22621.1992). In the middle of installing June’s update the other night the power went out (terrific electrical storm came up suddenly). This system is on a UPS and stayed on but the UPS did not have enough capacity to keep the system running until the update finished. Everything went down. The power stayed out until the next morning, and to my amazement, the updates continued immediately after rebooting. I let it finish. Even more surprising, everything seemed  to be running fine until I went to run System Restore to create a restore point. System Restore has disappeared, so after searching for this problem I ran Chkdsk, SFC, and DSM with the various switches. DISM fixed a bunch of errors. After rebooting I still cannot invoke System Restore nor access any previous restore points. Rerunning Chkdsk, SFC, and DSM showed everything to be OK. I checked to make sure that the required services were turned on and they are. Even under the Tools menu there is no System Restore option, so I am guessing that something has been turned off in the Registry.

Can someone offer some help as to how I can implement System Restore again. Oh yes, when I try to do a simple System Image, I get the error that it cannot take a snapshot, which is related of course .

Thanks in advance,

Judith

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windbg

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You can get to it two ways:

Control Panel\Recovery\Configure System Restore

Settings App\System\About – under the first section see Related Links -> System Protection

You will need to turn it on, then configure the size (GB or % of disk)
I think it is turned OFF by default in Win11, so keep an eye on it

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To bring up the dialog to manage System Restore, go to Settings | System | About. Click on the “System Protection” link.

--Joe

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Beat you to it!

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Joe and PCCano:

Thanks to both of you for replying. That is one of the many things I tried before writing my first note, and it didn’t work. I’ve attached two screen grabs. One is of the System Protection screen that says it’s searching but really isn’t. It just sits there. The second is the error screen that appears when I click on the System Protection Link.

I’ve exhausted my guesses about obvious solutions. That’s what led me to think that something was changed in the registry, but haven’t the faintest idea of where to look.

Judith

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This MakeUseOf link may help.  Volume Shadow Copy services may not be started.

Win 11 home - 24H2
Attitude is a choice...Choose wisely

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Thanks for replying. I found the same article a few days ago and tried all steps. Problem remains. I’m going to bite the bullet and re-install Win 11. Won’t lose any data as they are all on external drives, but will have to re-install all my programs.

Judith

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mledman

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Have you tried a repair install over the top?

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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mledman

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Susan,

I’ve tried a repair install several times and it hasn’t worked. Ive used a bootable USB thumb drives that I made very recently from the Media Installer, as well as several ISO USB drives. I’ve run HP’s hardware diagnostics, and everything checks out, including the USB port into which I plugged the bootable thumb drive. After changing the BIOS to boot from the thumb drive, it doesn’t. Both Repair, and Recovery then ask for the BitLocker Key(s), which I entered. The screen then shows my drives C & D (the one internal drive is partitioned), a BootX, and drive e:, which is the USB thumb drive port. Nothing else happens. When I look at each of the drives, there are some directories listed, but they appear empty. I’ve checked this bootable drive on another computer and it appears that everything needed it there. I’m really stumped as to why I cannot boot from the bootable thumb drive.

This is not an old computer. It came with Win 10 and I updated it to Win 11 22H2 a few months ago, after which everything ran smoothly. Sure hate to scrap it. BTW, it’s an AIO, so can’t swap out the drive. Any further ideas appreciated?

Judith

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To do a repair install you do not boot from the thumb drive.  With windows running, you navigate to the ISO file, mount it, and run setup.exe.  The ISO file may need to be on the drive windows is on.

See knowledge base 6000015 for details #2556942

Win 11 home - 24H2
Attitude is a choice...Choose wisely

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The point is that Windows is not running. It boots up to what I think is the manufacturer’s hardware level giving me choices of how to recover, restore, command prompt etc. When I insert an install USB drive with a new install of Windows I have to pick the NTFS partition to which I want to install. There are only 2 NTFS partitions to choose and one says it’s bitlocker blocked. The instructions say to unlock it via the control panel but I can’t access a control panel obviously. The other partition is for Microsoft recovery (which doesn’t work at this point). I also have the option to format any of these partitions but I haven’t any idea of which to choose. Suggestions?

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Your Windows 11 was running OK a week ago after your power problems. Has something else happened since then to prevent you from starting Windows normally?

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Pardon me at laughing at your question. At this point I can no longer remember the exact sequence of events, but I think that when I rebooted the next morning the update immediately resumed and appeared to complete normally. I restarted as instructed and used the system normally as usual. I powered down the computer at night, as I always do, and when I rebooted the next morning, it hung at the logo with the spinning circle. There was no message that it was updating, but I let it stay that way for 2 hours, and finally forced a power down. The next power up brought the screen (blue background with white font) with all the recovery/restore options — none of which worked.

Remembering the definition of insanity, I decided to do the horrendous: boot to an install disc, and reformat C:, which means that I’m losing all partitions and programs, and then reinstall Win 11 from scratch. (Fortunately all my data files are on external discs).

The format wipes out BitLocker, and I’m hesitant to add it back. Will I be able to avoid it and what are the dangers of doing so?

Thanks,

Judith

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mledman, b

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jel wrote:

It boots up to what I think is the manufacturer’s hardware level giving me choices of how to recover, restore, command prompt etc.

At this point what happened when you clicked “troubleshoot” then “reset this PC”?

Win 11 home - 24H2
Attitude is a choice...Choose wisely

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There was no Reset option — anywhere. It gave me the option for booting to Safe Boot, Safe Boot with Networking, to UEFI devices and to a command prompt. The latter was the only one that worked. All others booted to the Logo/spinning circle. At the dot prompt I was able to navigate to the USB Win 11 Install thumb drive which I had inserted. I ran setup and it told me that I had to use the control panel to eliminate the BitLocker code. I saw no way to do that from the thumb drive.

Right now I’m 52% into formatting the hard drive, and then will install a fresh version of Win 11. Formatting won’t finish until later this afternoon (1.9GB hard drive).

Judith

 

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mledman

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jel wrote:

Right now I’m 52% into formatting the hard drive, and then will install a fresh version of Win 11. Formatting won’t finish until later this afternoon (1.9GB hard drive).

Quick format is good enough and takes a minute.

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Remember. I have to work from a dot-prompt and did not know the command for a quick prompt. I just entered format.exe. It probably is a switch, but didn’t think of it at the time. Anyway, it’s now 72% completed. BTW, would a quick format eliminate the BitLocker key? That’s needed for a complete new install.

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As an update: thanks to everyone who offered suggestions. After the format and reinstall, I now have a working system and am slowly reinstalling s/w. I did not lose any data because they were are all on external drives.

This system came with one internal drive (2TB SSD) partitioned into a C: and D:. Had I not been in a semi-panic mode, I would have realized that the partition was not eliminated by the format since I specified a format of C at the dot prompt. The partition can still be removed from the Win 11 graphical interface, but am not sure I want to mess around anymore now that everything’s working fine.

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mledman

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