How to Run System Restore from Command Prompt Windows 7

When do you need to restore Windows 7?

System restore from Command Prompt in Windows 7 is a quite useful action when your system has crashed or cannot boot. Most users would like to restore system from a system backup instead of reinstalling Windows.

Reinstalling the system is a time-consuming process, for it wipes all your files and programs. In comparison, system restore requires less time, for it just withdraws unwanted changes and reverts Windows to an earlier date when everything was working fine.

In addition, when you buy a new computer and want to keep the old system, you can restore the old system to the new computer. In this way, you can transfer everything from the old system to the new computer. There’s no need for you to reinstall your frequently-used applications.

1. Launch System Restore from Command Prompt in System Recovery Options

When it comes to system restore with command line when Windows cannot boot, what comes to mind first is System Recovery Options Command Prompt in Windows 7. It is true. However, if you use “wbadmin start recovery” command, you will get the following error:

“Warning: The START RECOVERY command is not supported in this version of Windows.”

That is because some of the sub-commands of Wbadmin are only available for server, and “wbadmin start recovery” is one of them. This command is used to restore files/volumes/applications that were backed up using Windows Server Backup.

Luckily, you can open System Restore by another command:

1. Open CMD in System Recovery Options, type rstrui.exe and press Enter. This command will open System Restore wizard immediately.

2. Choose a restore point and click Next. Follow the instruction to complete system restore.

2. Launch System Restore via Safe Mode with Command Prompt

There is still another way to launch System Restore. You can go to Safe Mode with Command Prompt:

1. Restart your computer. During the start process, repeatedly press F8 until Windows Advanced Boot Options appears. Select Safe Mode with Command Prompt and press Enter.

2. When you get into the Command Prompt window, type cd restore and press Enter. Then type rstrui.exe and press Enter. Then you will launch the System Restore wizard and you can follow the wizard to complete restore process.

3. Restore Windows 7 with AOMEI Backupper.exe

AOMEI Backupper Professional is trustable backup and restore software. It enables you to backup and restore the system either from graphic user interface or command line. The best part is you can use the Universal Restore feature to restore system to dissimilar hardware. Besides, it supports both 32-bit and 64-bit of Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP.

Some required parameters:
● {/r}: restore the backup of system, disk, partition or dynamic volume.
● {/t} {system | disk | part}: specify restore type.
● {/s}{D:\my backup\my backup.adi | \\192.168.1.1.\my backup\my backup.adi}: specify the path of the image file.
● {/x}: specify universal restore to restore system to dissimilar hardware. It has to be used with "/t system" and "/t disk".

AOMEI Backupper restore is based on AOMEI Backupper backup. That is to say, if you want to perform system restore with AOMEI Backupper, you must create a system image backup by AOMEI Backupper in advance. To make the restore process smooth, you can check if system image backup is intact and without error by using the Check Image feature.

Steps to run system restore from Command Prompt in Windows 7

Step 1. Click "Start" and type CMD to open the Command Prompt. Right click "cmd" and select "Run as administrator".

Step 2. Navigate to AOMEI Backupper installation directory by typing the following command and press Enter:

cd [installation path of AOMEI Backupper] (e.g., cd C:\Program Files (x86)\AOMEI Backupper)

Step 3. Type the following command and press Enter to start restore:

AMBackup /r /t [backup type] /s "[backup location path]" /d [destination location]

For example:

① To restore the system image “systembackup1.adi” saved in J:\systembackup to disk 1. The command should be: AMBackup /r /t system /s “J:\system backup\systembackup1.adi” /d 1.

② To restore the system image “systembackup1.adi” saved in D:\system backup to partition 0 on disk 0 and perform universal restore. The command should be: AMBackup /r /t system /s "D:\system backup\systembackup1.adi" /d 0:0 /x.

Notes:
● To run system restore when Windows fails to boot, you should create bootable media with AOMEI Backupper to boot your machine. It will bring you to the main interface of AOMEI Backupper. You can open Command Prompt from Tools > Windows shell command and then type the commands mentioned above to perform system restore.
● If you run the commands under Windows PE, the drive letters might change.

Restore with AOMEI Backupper GUI

If there is nothing wrong with your Windows 7, you just want to restore it to a specific point to uninstall some programs or migrate system to another disk, like SSD or something alike. You do not have to run system restore from Command Prompt in Windows 7. You can also carry out the operations by directly launching this software's graphic user interface in Windows:

Click Restore and Select Task > Choose the system backup task from the list > Select to restore the entire system or a partition > (Optional) Choose a destination path to restore the system image to > Click Start Restore. It is quite easy and you can make it with only a few clicks.

Conclusion

Now you know how to run system restore from Command Prompt in Windows 7. AOMEI Backupper offers you both command line operations and GUI operations. You can also use it to run system restore via command lines in Windows 10. Besides system backup & recovery, AOMEI Backupper is also excellent disk clone software. With it, you can clone hard drives and migrate Windows 7 to SSD easily.

If you want to protect unlimited computers within your company, you can pick AOMEI Backupper Technician. With the inbuilt AOMEI Image Deploy tool, you are also allowed to deploy/restore system image file on server-side computer to multiple client-side computers over network.