[ad]Dear Computer Lady,
Myself and two of my friends have windows 7 and none of us can use stem restore successfully. We never had a problem when we had XP.
Thanks for your input, Barbara
Dear Barbara,
There are a couple of reasons why system restore might not be working.
First, you need to make sure it is turned on, and creating restore points.
Second, many virus or malware programs target system restore so that the infected computer can’t easily be rid of the infection. Getting rid of the virus or malware will usually fix this.
To make sure system restore is turned on for your drive, just follow these directions:
Click the “Start” button, right-click on “Computer, then click, “Properties” in the context menu that appears.
In the left column, click on “System Protection”.
In the, “Protection Settings” section, click your hard drive (Usually C:) then click, “Configure”.
Make sure, “Restore system settings and previous versions of files” is selected.
Click “OK” twice to save your changes and close the dialog box.
Elizabeth
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Elizabeth Boston is a Web designer, Social Media Consultant and managing editor of, “Ask The Computer Lady”.
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If Barbara means automatically created restore points such as daily, you will find that by design Windows 7 will only create an automatic restore point if no restore points of any type have been created for 7 days. I use the free software Quick Restore Maker, scheduling automatic restore points with the Windows task scheduler.
Elizabeth – I followed above advice and can’t seem to open “Properties”. Decided to clean my computer last week and lost quite a bit. Tried to restore (thought I was backing up to an external hard drive but apparently was not). I use Malware Bites, AVG and Spybot as you have advised over the years. At this point I have lost my Thunderbird address book and a few Windows features. Think this all coincided with a JavaScript update last week which did not complete. Too old and too much time on my hands. Thanks for all you do!