System Restore points are deleted after you restart your Windows 7-based computer

Symptoms

You set Windows 7 to create System Restore points but notice that your system restore points have been deleted when you restart your computer. You can create new system restore points successfully but those restore points are also being deleted when rebooting Windows.

Cause

This issue can be caused if the maximum storage size limit is set to low for your shadow storage.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, adjust the maximum shadow storage allocation. To do this, follow the steps listed below:

1. Click Start, type System in the Search box and then click System from the list under Control panel

2. Click System protection in the task pane

3. Under Protection Settings click to select Local Disk (C:) (System) and then click Configure

4. Under Disk Space Usage, move the Max Usage slider to the right to increase the disk space usage for System Restore points

Note: If protection is turned on for additional drives you might consider increasing the Max Usage for those drives as well.

More Information

When the issue happens, one or more of the following events might be logged in the Event log:

Event ID 25:

The shadow copies of volume C: were deleted because the shadow copy storage could not grow in time.  Consider reducing the IO load on the system or choose a shadow copy storage volume that is not being shadow copied."

Event ID 22:

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: A critical component required by the Volume Shadow Copy service is not registered. This might happened if an error occurred during Windows setup or during installation of a Shadow Copy provider. The error returned from CoCreateInstance on class with CLSID {e579ab5f-1cc4-44b4-bed9-de0991ff0623} and Name IVssCoordinatorEx2 is [0x80040154, Class not registered].

Event ID 8193:

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error calling routine CoCreateInstance.  hr = 0x80040154, Class not registered.

To increase the size of shadow storage using command prompt commands follow these steps:

1. Open a command prompt with administrative privileges

2. At the command prompt type Vssadmin list shadowstorage

3. Take note of what the shadow storage allocation is on the drive you're having issues with

4. Change the allocation by using the Vssadmin command, syntax: vssadmin resize shadowstorage /On=C: /For=C: /Maxsize=1G (where Maxsize=the amount of disk space you've allocated to System Restore points, you should increase it larger)

5. Then reboot your computer

Restore point deletion can also be caused by the following:

• Some 3rd party disk applications can cause restore points to be deleted. To test for this issue disable these types of applications to see if it can resolve the problem.

• Corrupted ACLs for pagefiles.sys and hiberfil.sys can also cause the issue. To test for this issue, disable pagefile and hiberfil on your system, defrag the drive to verify that these files have been deleted and then enable pagefile and hiberfil. Reboot the computer and create restore points and verify that restore points are not deleted over the next few days.

• Systems with a dual boot with Windows XP will also cause system restore points to be deleted. See KB 926185 for more details.