Windows 10: Win10 Pro (1903 - Build 18362) System Restore behaviour

I've noticed some strange behaviour with creating a System Restore Point in Windows 10, this may be an oddball way of doing things but it's worked for me for many years prior to upgrading to Windows 10 x64 (from Windows 7 x64).


In short - I had a scheduled task that ran daily - every 4 hours, which created a System Restore Point in Powershell.

The code for this is as follows:


Checkpoint-Computer -Description "[CreateSR] Scheduled Restore Point" -RestorePointType MODIFY_SETTINGS


Now, this worked perfectly in Windows 7 (and it may have been working perfectly in Windows 10 post-upgrade - I can't be certain), however - the point is running the above command on my PC will certainly create a System Restore Point on all drives but my System Drive (the same drive on which Windows is installed).


Looking at System Restore, it shows the restore point as a valid one to use - so far, so good.

If I undertake the following test process:

1. Create Folder on Drive C: (can be called anything)
2. Inside folder, create a text file, any name - write a couple of words and save the file.
3. Execute Powershell above.
4. Modify file you created in Step #2 and save.

This SHOULD give me Previous Versions of the file at the time I executed step #3 - but it instead tells me there are no restore points available.

If I modify the Powershell script to use APPLICATION_INSTALL as the RestorePointType instead of MODIFY_SETTINGS, I still get a restore point in System Restore, but still nothing in Previous Versions.


If I check any other drive than C: - I get plenty of previous versions, with timestamps which match when I took the snapshots, either manually or on schedule.


If I disable the schedule and instead use a VBScript to take a snapshot (code below):

swinmgmts = "winmgmts:\\.\root\default:Systemrestore"
GetObject(swinmgmts).CreateRestorePoint "[CreateSR] Scheduled Restore Point", 7, 100


I do indeed get System Restore Points as before and they are present on Drive C:.

If I use an older version of the above code (which I used successfully on Windows 7) - substituting 7, 100 with 0, 100 - it again, creates a restore point as far as System Restore is concerned, but doesn't show any old files (repeating the steps above).


I'm wondering if anyone else has similar issues using Automatic System Restore Points or whether my Windows 10 is a little odd in that it is happy to create Restore Points while using the APPLICATION_INSTALL flag with WMI, yet won't do the same task with the MODIFY_SETTINGS flag. The fact it won't do either under Powershell confuses me even more.


I'd like to add the following - there are no events in Event Viewer that suggests VSS is having any issues or problems, my disks are good (chkdsk /f), the OS is good (sfc /scannow) and I'm definitely executing everything as an Administrator - be it schedule tasks or manually performing the steps.


This may well be the result of a Windows 10 update or this may be the behaviour of Windows 10 right from the start that I simply never noticed - but to be fair, how often do you check things if there isn't a problem with it?


Any thoughts or ideas or suggestions would be helpful - if any more detail is required, let me know.


Edit: Forgot to mention I'd set the SystemRestorePointCreationFrequency DWORD to 0 (so I can create as many restore points as I like).

Edit #2: This seems to happen on another PC I have tried it on, so it looks like something is either broken with 2 independent Win10 PCs (same OS build, architecture) or there's some strange misconfiguration somewhere - or maybe MS changed something with a patch?

:)

 

Win10 Pro (1903 - Build 18362) System Restore behaviour

I've noticed some strange behaviour with creating a System Restore Point in Windows 10, this may be an oddball way of doing things but it's worked for me for many years prior to upgrading to Windows 10 x64 (from Windows 7 x64).

In short - I had a scheduled task that ran daily - every 4 hours, which created a System Restore Point in Powershell.

The code for this is as follows:

Code:

Checkpoint-Computer -Description "[CreateSR] Scheduled Restore Point" -RestorePointType MODIFY_SETTINGS

Now, this worked perfectly in Windows 7 (and it may have been working perfectly in Windows 10 post-upgrade - I can't be certain), however - the point is running the above command on my PC will certainly create a System Restore Point on all drives but my
System Drive (the same drive on which Windows is installed).

Looking at System Restore, it shows the restore point as a valid one to use - so far, so good.

If I undertake the following test process:

1. Create Folder on Drive C: (can be called anything)
2. Inside folder, create a text file, any name - write a couple of words and save the file.
3. Execute Powershell above.
4. Modify file you created in Step #2 and save.

This SHOULD give me Previous Versions of the file at the time I executed step #3 - but it instead tells me there are no restore points available.

If I modify the Powershell script to use APPLICATION_INSTALL as the RestorePointType instead of MODIFY_SETTINGS, I still get a restore point in System Restore, but still nothing in Previous Versions.

If I check any other drive than C: - I get plenty of previous versions, with timestamps which match when I took the snapshots, either manually or on schedule.

If I disable the schedule and instead use a VBScript to take a snapshot (code below):

Code:

swinmgmts = "winmgmts:\\.\root\default:Systemrestore"

GetObject(swinmgmts).CreateRestorePoint "[CreateSR] Scheduled Restore Point", 7, 100

I do indeed get System Restore Points as before and they are present on Drive C:.

If I use an older version of the above code (which I used successfully on Windows 7) - substituting 7, 100 with 0, 100 - it again, creates a restore point as far as System Restore is concerned, but doesn't show any old files (repeating the steps above).

I'm wondering if anyone else has similar issues using Automatic System Restore Points or whether my Windows 10 is a little odd in that it is happy to create Restore Points while using the APPLICATION_INSTALL flag with WMI, yet won't do the same task with
the MODIFY_SETTINGS flag. The fact it won't do either under Powershell confuses me even more.

I'd like to add the following - there are no events in Event Viewer that suggests VSS is having any issues or problems, my disks are good (chkdsk /f), the OS is good (sfc /scannow) and I'm definitely executing everything as an Administrator - be it schedule
tasks or manually performing the steps.

This may well be the result of a Windows 10 update or this may be the behaviour of Windows 10 right from the start that I simply never noticed - but to be fair, how often do you check things if there isn't a problem with it?

Any thoughts or ideas or suggestions would be helpful - if any more detail is required, let me know.

Edit: Forgot to mention I'd set the SystemRestorePointCreationFrequency DWORD to 0 (so I can create as many restore points as I like).

Edit #2: This seems to happen on another PC I have tried it on, so it looks like something is either broken with 2 independent Win10 PCs (same OS build, architecture) or there's some strange misconfiguration somewhere - or maybe MS changed something with
a patch?

 

Win10 Pro (1903 - Build 18362) System Restore behaviour

Hi Arkane78

Greetings! I am Vijay, an Independent Advisor. Create a post on Technet as well for this issue

Windows IT Pro Technet Forum -
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/win...

 

Win10 Pro (1903 - Build 18362) System Restore behaviour

Hi Vijay,

Have just done this as well - thanks.