Solved Do I Need System Restore?

When a system restore point is created a shadow copy is made. If you do a system restore, only parts of the shadow are restored. There is a lot more in there.

You can look inside shadow copies and retrieve files.

One simple way is to use shadowcopyview which is a tiny little portable

rt click one of the shadowcopies and select open in windows explorer



shadowcopyview also runs in winpe without any extra dependencies. I always include it in my pebuilds. Have done for many years.

It is also possible to create a wim image of a shadow copy which can be used to restore the entire os. I have done it many times.

Thanks to you both. I was thinking about my particular situation where there seems to be an issue with allocated shadow copy space which doesn't allow me to set a manual restore point. I wasn't sure if the auto restore points would still be created when I get the "Insufficient Storage Space " error message or if the process would be cancelled because of this? Thanks again.

Mitch said:

Thanks to you both. I was thinking about my particular situation where there seems to be an issue with allocated shadow copy space which doesn't allow me to set a manual restore point. I wasn't sure if the auto restore points would still be created when I get the "Insufficient Storage Space " error message or if the process would be cancelled because of this? Thanks again.

Click to expand...

Did you actually read my post (#34)?

Did you adjust re-adjust the slider? And what do you mean you can't create a manual restore point?

I get the feeling you aren't doing something right. You might read that post again? And especially pay attention to the images.

@dru Hi, Yes. I did everything you suggested. System protection is/ was enabled for the 2 drives + Dell support and the slider for the C drive set to around 10GB. The data drive was lower as i keep anything in external drives. Dell told me to increase the size of the shadow allocation using cmd which I did. By creating a manual recovery point, I mean " Create a manual recovery point right now for drives......."
Thanks

When available, please update the progress with the steps in post #31.

@zbook .Thanks.Ill try and do that. One thing that occurred to me is that the VSS service is not always running. When I do a Macrium backup it starts and closes VSS. If check Services later, sometimes after a reboot, is shows the service as stopped. Startup is set to Automatic. If I'm getting an insufficient storage error could the stopped VSS Service cause that and if its set to Auto, should it be running all the time? Macrium completes with no problem.
Thanks.

There may be information in the collected log files.

Hi. Finally tracked down what I was doing wrong. I had System Protection turned on for the C, D (Data) and Dell Support. If I turn off Sys Prot for the D drive and Dell and leave only the C drive on a Restore Point is created. Strangely, this is different to our other PC where all 3 are enabled and a Restore Point is created. Not sure how this works. Thanks very much to all who posted. Your advice is much appreciated.

System Restore in tandem with the F8 boot menu are good to have, especially if you end up having boot issues. I would recommend most users enable them both.

To do so, in an admin command prompt type the following:

Then you would be able to press F8 during boot before the spinning dots appear to enter safe mode or "Restore Last Known Good Configuration" when your system won't turn on.

If you have backups and etc it's not really necessary, but it can come in handy for people who aren't used to repairing systems.

Mitch said:

. . . my main concern are BIOS updates . . .

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If you download any BIOS update(s) from the Dell support website and keep them, you will be able to rerun the last valid BIOS update by just running that version to overwrite the U/S version.

Here are my backup versions -

View attachment 82202
- version 2.10.1 is the latest for my machine

Thanks @BobOmb and @IanMosley . I've downloaded the current Dell BIOS from Dell Support and saved it to a USB. To install the previous BIOS from a USB do we insert the USB and boot, tap F12 to access the one time boot menu and select the USB? After that I'm a bit hazy about how to install it from there. Would appreciate your advice. Thanks.

Mitch said:

Thanks @BobOmb and @IanMosley . I've downloaded the current Dell BIOS from Dell Support and saved it to a USB. To install the previous BIOS from a USB do we insert the USB and boot, tap F12 to access the one time boot menu and select the USB? After that I'm a bit hazy about how to install it from there. Would appreciate your advice. Thanks.

Click to expand...

You just double-click the version you wish to install.

Don't forget - you can download previous versions from the Dell support page -

Select the expand arrow on the right-hand side and then select 'View full driver details' -

View attachment 82223

and then select 'Other Available Versions' -

View attachment 82224

@IanMosley . Thanks very much. I've done many BIOS updates without problems but useful to know what to do if things go wrong. I usually wait until BIOS updates appear on Supportassist before installing them as they appear some time after release on Dell Drivers & Downloads with, hopefully, any problems fixed. I usually install directly from the website to avoid problems. Thanks again Ian.

You're very welcome!!