Solved: No System Restore Points in Windows 7

No system restore points have been created in Windows 7

“I cannot restore system and create a restore point in Windows 7. When I try to restore system, System Restore says "no restore points have been created" and the "Next" button in the initial screen is greyed out. After that, I try to create a restore point, but I receive this error “volume shadow copy service component encountered an expected error". Any suggestion will be appreciated.”

Why system restore points missing?

In Windows 7, system restore is enabled by default. And it will automatically create system restore points. But you may find that there is no restore points in Windows 7. Why?

See below and I’ll some possible reasons and solutions for this problem.

• You manually turn off system restore. In Windows 7, every time you disable system restore, the system points will be deleted automatically. So, you need to go to system restore window and ensure “Turn off System Resore on all drives” is unchecked.
•  The disk space to save restore points is very low. For this situation, you need to increase the max usage in the system protection window.
• The restore points could only be saved for up to 90 days. When the time is up, it will be removed as well.
• Upgrading or reinstalling system remove the system restore points. You have to enable system restore again manually.

•  Your computer may have any kind of USB turbo-boosters like ASRock XFast USB.

• The Volume Shadow Service is not running. You could go to the services.msc and start it manually.

• System Restore has corrupted files. You could find out the corrupted files with system file checker and then repair it.

• The page file is defragmented, you need to recreate one.

How to solve no system restore points in Windows 7

To recover lost system restore points, there are many solutions, you could try the common used solutions first, such as, enable system restore, adjust the disk space usage, start the volume shadow copy service, or check if you have USB turbo-boosters. Then, see below and try the rest of solutions.

• Solution 1: Find out the corrupted files and repair it

• Solution 2: Change triggers in SR properties

• Solution 3: Recreate Page File on your computer

Solution 1: Find out the corrupted files and repair it

Step 1. Type cmd in the search box, right-click it and select “Run as administrator”.

Step 2. Type sfc/scannow at the new window and wait. Then, type the following command prompt when you receive a message , “Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them”.

findstr/c:”[SR]” %windir%\logs\cbs\cbs.log >sfcdetails.txt

Step 3. Then, navigate to Windows/system 32 and open afcdetails.txt in Notepad. At last, click Edit and Find, type cannot repair member files to see the problems.

Now, you could find the solutions based on the corrupted file and repair it. After that, see if you could create system restore points.

Solution 2: Change triggers in SR properties

SR files in the Task Scheduler is one of the reasons, which result in no system restore points. To troubleshoot the problem, you need to change triggers in SR properties.

Step 1. Type Task Scheduler in the search box and select it from the context menu.

Step 2. Expand the Task Scheduler Library, then select Microsoft > Windows > SystemRestore .

Step 3. Click the entry named SR in the top pane.

Step 4. Click the History tab in the bottom pane and see system restore tasks, warnings and errors recorded.

Step 5. Double-click SR file, click Triggers and Edit, then change the time to create a restore point.

Step 6. To specify the conditions, click Conditions and uncheck Start the task only if the computer is idle for and Start the task only if the computer is on AC power.

Solution 3: Recreate Page File on your computer

To recreate page file, you need to delete it at first. So, this operation will be divided into 2 parts, including deleting page file, recreating page file.

Part 1: Delete page file

Step 1. Type View advanced system settings in the search box and select it from the context menu.

Step 2. Click Settings under Performance.

Step 3. Then, click Advanced and Change under Virtual memory.

Step 4. Uncheck Automatically manage paging file size for all drives, select a drive and tick No paging file, then click Set and OK to apply these changes.

Step 5. Restart your computer and delete pagefile.sys from C drive.

✎Note: pagefile.sys is a hidden file. Thus, you need to show hidden files or folders first. You can go to Computer > Tools > Folder Options > View, then tick Show hidden files, folders, and drives.

Part 2: Recreate page file

Step 1. Run cmd as administror and type defrag /h c: in the command prompt window.

Step 2. Enable the page files by step 1-4 in part 1. At last, click Ok (three times) to exit.

Step 3. Restart your computer and check if System Restore or Volume Shadow Copy is running correctly.

Except for Window 7, Windows 10 also has similar questions, you could refers to System Restore Points Gone in Windows 10 and fix your problem with given solutions.

How to restore Windows 7 if there is no system restore point

Besides restore points, system backup could also help you restore your computer to a previous good state. And it will restore all the installed programs and files.

To create a system image backup, you need a trust and reliable backup and restore software like AOMEI Backupper Standard, which could help you create system image image and restore system with secure boot. And it has a clear interface and user-friendly design.

Preparation work:

☞ Download AOMEI Backupper Standard and install it.

☞ Create a system image backup with AOMEI Backupper Standard. A system backup is a premise of restoring system.

Detailed steps:

Step 1. Open AOMEI Backupper Standard and click Restore and Select Task.

Step 2. Then select the backup image you want to restore and click Next.

Step 3. Tick “ Restore this system backup” and click Next.

Step 4. Preview the following operation and click Start Restore. Wait until the process is 100% completed.

✎Notes:

• If your computer is unbootable, you could create a system image backup and bootable media on a working computer, then restore system in the recovery environment.

• If the system image create on a computer with different hardware, you need to enable Universal Restore (supported on AOMEI Backupper Professional). Otherwise, your computer will fail to start after restoration.

• This version only supports Windows 7/8/10/11/XP/Vista. If you are using Server 2008/2012/2016/2019/2022 or its R2 version, you could consider using AOMEI Backupper Server.

Summary

The given solutions could fix “no system restore points in Windows 7”. But there are still others situation you cannot fix, such as, A restore point reaches an age of 90 days, the volume used to store restore points is corrupted, etc. So, you’d better create a system image backup and use it to restore your computer.

To ensure the security of your backups, you’d better use the 3-2-1 backup strategy. That is, 3 copies of your data, kept at different devices, 1 copy offline.