Vista restore previous version

To display System Properties screen for common tasks on your system, you will need administration permissions and you will be requested to continue by Windows User Account.

The System Protection tab in the System Properties screen contains information about System Restore and previous versions of files and enables you to activate previous versions file protection on disks available on your computer. If you select the checkbox next to the disks listed in the Available Disks list, you can activate previous versions for the selected lists. If previous versions is already active for a disk as you see on the sample screenshot you will also see most recent restore point for that disk.

You can create a restore point by using the Create When you click the Create button to define a new restore point, you are requested to enter a descriptive name for the restore point. Then until the below success message is displayed, a progress bar is shown on the screen. After the success message is shown, the most recent restore points are updated on the list to reflect the latest changes. After previous versions on a disk drive is activated, you can restore files from a restore point in the past.

This means if you have a file deleted or updated, you can get back its previous version from the restore points before the update or delete process has taken place. To view a file from previous versions or copy a file from previous versions, open the Properties screen of the disk drive that the files were originally created on. Or again open the Properties tab of the folder which was containing the files you want to restore older versions or copy from older versions.

System upgrades or software installation can request a restore point be created, which could take a few seconds. Bottom line - I haven't seen any facts behind the urban legend that Previous Versions or System Restore actually affect system performance in a negative way.

I know that, like Raymond Chen, when I find the occasional use for them, they save me days of work. That seems like a pretty solid bet. That might be an issue if disk space wasn't so cheap as to be essentially free.

But even if you're stuck on a small drive, you can modify the space Windows uses for System Restore with a simple registry tweak. That's a bit of a a setback. Vista's got way too many versions , and if yours isn't Business or Ultimate, you've got a lousy deal in the Volume Shadow Copy area.

That's because Vista still ships with the Volume Shadow Copy service enabled, but without a user interface to access it. But we're not going to let a roadblock like that stop us, are we? Those files are there, and we're totally going to get them. Shadow Explorer is a free program which provides a user interface to your Previous Version files. It's not pretty, but we want our file pretty bad so we'll let it slide. Probably the quickest solution is to use some command-line trickery to make the Volume Shadow copies show up in Explorer.

Adi Oltean wrote a nice post on this a bit ago - I'll summarize the steps, but you should really read his post to understand what he's doing. While the actual commands may look a bit scary, it's actually incredibly easy.

There are just three steps:. Pay attention to that last line! But, you should be able to do the above three steps in about a minute, at which point you can browse through the shadow copy via command-line or the Windows Explorer.

This all works because the files were always stored on your hard drive, they just weren't visible because they weren't associated with a drive letter. Creating a symbolic link takes care of that.

When you're done, just delete the folder in Explorer and the link is destroyed. You can use Vista Anytime Upgrade to upgrade to a version of Vista which includes the Previous Versions user interface. Remember that Vista's been making these file snapshots since you installed it, it just hasn't provided you a user interface to get to them. Take your pick.

But again, this argument is academic when you've lost a file and want it back. Do you have repro steps? Visual Studio might be doing god knows what, I suppose, but writable files are sacrosanct. You really saved my life on this one. Thanks a million! Kudos to you! Nice post, concise and to the point. It is nice to know that vista is nicer than its reputation makes it up to be I am a MacOS and Xp user.

And Shadow explorer is a nice piece of software. Thanks for the help RC. At last Vista has added a feature that was in, e. VMS in the 's! Windows Vista. Windows XP. Other issues. How to create a Windows restore point. How to delete a Windows restore point. How to create a recovery disk in Windows. How to erase my hard drive and start over.