Disable System Restore

There may come a time when you want to disable system restore. I can't really think of a good reason to do so. Some people might claim that you need to in order to clean out a virus but that's bull and don't listen to them. Never has, and never will, a virus amazingly crawl out of a restore point and re-infect the machine. It's not going to happen, it's not able to happen, and the very notion of such is absurd beyond belief. The ONLY way that it will get out of the restore is to go ahead and actually USE the restore function. Assuming you don't do that (and know enough to take care of an infestation properly) there's absolutely no risk and at the very least System Restore should not be turned off until AFTER the system shows a clean scan for all files other than those that actually reside in the restore folder. So, when you see someone telling you to turn off the system restore prior to cleaning malware tell them they're on drugs or just plain stupid.

Anyhow, people want to turn it off... So this is how you do it:

1. Open the System Properties from the Control Panel or by pressing WinKey + Pause/Break or even by typing "sysdm.cpl" into the Run dialogue box in the Start menu. If you want you can even right click "My Computer" on the desktop and select properties.
2. Click on the Performances tab
3. Click on File System
4. Click Troubleshooting
5. Disable the System Restore by checking the box
6. Important: Reboot Now — do not wait

To learn more read Noel Paton's (Microsoft MVP) page:
Quick Tips for System Restore

Now if you ever want to clean out the restore contents just go ahead and disable System Restore, reboot for good measure, and then enable System Restore and create a brand new shiny restore point.

OS: ME > General
Date: 10/30/05
Updated: 01/15/05

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