What Is System Restore?

Date First Published: 20th March 2024

Topic: Computer Systems

Subtopic: Computer Software

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty: Medium

Difficulty Level: 4/10

CONTENTS

How Does System Restore Work?
Advantages and Disadvantages Of System Restore

Learn about what system restore is in this article.

System Restore is a built-in utility in Windows that allows users to restore their system to a previous state. This allows unwanted changes that affect system performance or its basic operation to be reversed without affecting personal data, such as documents, photos, new files, and new email messages. System Restore is available in Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, and Windows 7.

System Restore can take 15 minutes to 1 hour to complete. This time varies, depending on the backup size. If the backup size is large, the time taken for System restore can greatly increase.

How Does System Restore Work?

System Restore monitors system activity and takes a snapshot of system files, device drivers, installed programs, and Windows registry keys. It saves these snapshots as restore points once a day by default. Types of activities that trigger automatic creation of restore points include installing software, updating hardware drivers, and installing new hardware drivers. Restore points can also be created manually before making any changes to the system, such as installing new programs.

Advantages and Disadvantages Of System Restore

The advantages of System Restore are:

It allows certain types of changes made to the operating system that affect system performance or its basic operation to be reversed, which can repair the operating system without a factory reset.
It can resolve issues with system stability that might happen after installing software that contains malware or a problematic Windows update.
It is simple to undo system changes made since the restore point was created and does not require the operating system to be reinstalled.

The disadvantages of system restore are:

It cannot restore any personal files, so it will not help if users have forgotten to make backups of their data or want to undo a change they have made to a personal file.
It does not guarantee that the issue will be resolved. For example, a driver may have been corrupted a few weeks ago and restoring the computer back to a few days ago may not do anything to resolve the issue.
It cannot fix advanced issues, like startup issues, so repair utilities that can diagnose the operating system and automatically correct problems might be more suitable.