Before installing additional programs and drivers on a newly installed Windows 7 computer, make sure you have System Protection turned on. System Protection is a feature that regularly creates and maintains information about your computer’s system files and registry.
System protection also preserves previous versions of files that you have changed. It stores these files in restore points that are created just before significant system events, such as the installation of a program or device driver. By default, system protection is automatically enabled for the drive on which Windows is installed. System protection can only be enabled for drives formatted using the NTFS file system.
To check if protection is enabled, go to Control Panel, click on System and select System Protection.
The System Properties dialog box opens. Click the System Protection tab. Locate the drive labeled “System” – this is the drive where Windows 7 is installed. Protection for this drive is enabled by default – if not, click it to enable it. Optionally, you can enable system protection for other non-system drives. If you do this, you can restore the previous versions of the files on those drives.
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Click the Configure button to view recovery options and the maximum space used by recovery points. If you have a lot of space on your computer, we recommend that you select the “Restore system settings and previous versions of files” option and set the maximum utilization percentage to more than 5 GB.
If you want to see the restore points created by your system, click the “System Restore” button.
A list of restore points will appear. You can skip to this list in the future if you need to perform a restore from one of the available restore points.
System Restore is a way to undo system changes on your computer without affecting your personal files such as email, documents, or photos. System Restore is the best choice if you’ve installed a program or driver causing unexpected changes on your computer and uninstalling the program or driver didn’t fix the problem.
If you’ve been using System Restore for a while and can’t see all the restore points you’ve created, check out my articles at no restore points in Windows If you have any questions about system recovery, leave them in the comments. Enjoy!
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