How often should system restore points be used in Windows?

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System restore points are available from Windows XP, as far as I can remember. I don’t remember if Windows 98 or Windows 2000 had the option. Speaking of system recovery points, they are just a little above a screenshot of your system drive. They capture the resident program, its settings and the Windows registry as an image and save a few items needed to rebuild the system disk until you decide to go back.

Difference between system backup and system restore point

System backup and system restore point creation are two different things – like day and night. When you back up your computer – let’s just say the system drive – literally copy all the data from the system drive to a different location than the system drive. I’ve never heard of anyone making a backup of a system disk to the system disk itself. This spoils the real purpose of system backup.

The purpose of system backup is to create another set of files that you can use if the original files are corrupted. These files can only be program files or contain your files. This depends on how you configure your system backup program. You can also save your files manually using the XCOPY command. We talk about manual backup in a separate article.

You can configure your system recovery settings via Control Panel > System > System Protection > Configure as above.

When you create a system restore point, Windows simply takes a snapshot of the programs and settings related to the operating system. Windows 7 uses the Volume Shadow Copy service, which allows you to compress the snap into a very small file so you can create any number of restore points. Ideally, 1 GB should be sufficient to store the recovery points. With 1 GB, Windows can easily store more than 10 recovery points on one computer. Even if you create a system restore point, Windows does not contain your data files. For example, if you want to delete and restore your music files, you must use a file recovery program. System restoration can’t bring them back.

System recovery affects system files, programs and registry settings. It can also make changes to scripts, batch files, and other executables on your Windows computer. Therefore, all changes made to these files are undone. To learn more about this, click here: Find out which programs and files are affected after system recovery.

Frequency of system restore points

Frankly, there are no specific rules for the frequency of manual creation of a system restore point. It all depends on how a person uses their computer. However, you must create system restore points:

1. Before installing a program ;
2. Before making changes to the Windows registry (including cleaning the registry with third-party programs) ;
3. Before cleaning unnecessary files in aggressive mode, because some programs store their information in user profiles and if such files are lost, the computer/program may not be stable, but recovery is not always guaranteed in this case ;
4. Allow a Web site to perform a specific task on your computer, such as

In most cases, Windows automatically creates a default system restore point. Windows also creates a system restore point when it detects a major change to your system – such as installing Windows updates, drivers, or sometimes software.

The frequency with which a s ystem restore point. If you use the computer only for certain desktop and/or desktop publishing jobs, the frequency may be lower.

If you are one of the people who play many games – different games in real time with others on the Internet, the frequency of creating recovery points should be higher. Games tend to change settings – especially in terms of graphics and sound. If a game does not reset the settings to the state before loading the game, you will need a system restore point created before playing. This does not mean that you have to create a restore point each time before you start a game. But frequency could be something that keeps your graphics and audio settings intact if a game goes wrong.

Then there are people who like to experiment with different programs: whether they are already on the computer or newly installed. For example, I change settings in almost every session. These are essentially services, audio tools and other administrative tools, including manual editing of the register.

In my case, I create a restore point each time I start. Since using the GUI (Graphical User Interface) version of a system restore point causes delays – and makes me wait until the restore point is created – I use a script that creates a restore point in the background. I will share the creation of manual restore points in my next post .

I hope this explains the ideal frequency of a system restore point in Windows 10 / 8 / 7 based on computer usage. In case of doubt, do not hesitate to contact us via the comments section or forum.windowsbulletin.com. We have some good technicians in the windowsbulletin.com Forum who can help you with almost everything Microsoft has to offer!

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