Missing Restore Points/Shadow Copies

Some third-party tools can can cause the deletion of restore points in Windows Vista.

 

If the third-party tool is allowed to runs at boot time without running in Windows Preinstallation Environment (PE) or some version of Windows Vista, any changes that the tool makes to the disk will cause Windows Vista, once started, to invalidate and thus delete the restore points. Why are the restore points deleted? Because if a tool makes a change to the volume without going through Volsnap.sys (the volume shadow copy driver), when Windows Vista is started, it detects that it doesn’t have an accurate representation of the changes to the volume and thus can’t accurately reconstitute older versions of the file for System Restore (or any other application). This issue doesn’t affect Windows XP because the restore points are actually backup copies of system files stored under the Windows folder. As long as the third-party tool doesn’t change those files, the restore points in Windows XP remain intact.

 

To avoid having restore points deleted in Windows Vista, use third-party tools that run in Windows Vista or a version of Windows PE or Windows Recovery Environment (RE) that is based on Windows Vista.

Related Articles

 

Shadow copies may be lost when you defragment a volume

Restore points are deleted when booting into Windows XP in a dual-boot environment

Programs that manipulate volume blocks during the boot process may cause data loss in Windows Vista

System restore points and shadow copies of files are missing after you install Windows Vista Service Pack 1

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Saturday, September 27, 2008

 

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