System restore does not seem to have been stored

CCleaner for Windows
1

I have been having problems on FLICKR with the computer hanging up when I go to Upload and open the Select Files window. Other people seem to have this problem also at the moment.

But I noticed that the same is now happening on another website when I open the window to select files to upload.

I have been doing searches to see if I could find any suggestions. One forum suggested that using CCleaner on the Registry could result in problems like this so I thought I would do a System Restore. When I went to do this I found that no System Restore files are shown even though I have run CCleaner on the registry and saved the file as well as there being a couple of updates recently.

I have just clicked Save when prompted and presumed the file had been saved. Is this a known problem?

2

so are you saying that when you clicked Save when doing a reg clean in CC, you then can't find the saved .reg file?

by default, it saves it into your documents folder.

3

Have you used Defraggler or any other defrag program with the exception of Windows Defrag or Diskeeper? Only Windows Defrag and Diskeeper are "VSS Aware" and every other defrag program that makes changes to files (that's all, sorry) will destroy all your restore points.

Simply put, VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) creates "snapshots" of your file system on-the-fly and stores them in a seprate section of your disks. Each disk, if you have more than one, has the size of this area set in the System Restore section and snapshots of that disk are written there. When the size of the snapshot files exceeds the set limit, the oldest snapshots are deleted. The system restore points are part of that snapshot so when snapshots are deleted by Windows, so are the restore points.

The problem lies in the fact that all but the programs I mentioned above don't care about VSS, snapshots or restore points. Those programs do not disable the VSS service while they are defraging so VSS does a "copy and write" for all the file relocations and the VSS area on the disk fills up very quickly. In the end, there are no VSS shadow files that have enough true data to reconstruct anything for a system restore.

Bottom line is that you need to check your defrag program to see if it has the option to disable VSS or disable shadow copies. If it does not AND you wish to keep restore points, you will have to either buy Diskeeper (mucho bucks) or use the Windows Defrag (free). If you don't care about restore points, then go to "System Properties">"System Protection" and disable System Protection. You will be able to reclaim the disk space VSS was usnig.

See: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312067 for another iteration of the same stuff if you didn't understand this one.

4

Piriform's Defraggler is VSS aware.

Go to Settings, Options, Advanced, and tick Stop VSS when defragmenting NTFS volume.

5

PLEASE NOTE THAT

when CCleaner makes a registry backup this is totally unrelated to to System Restore,

and the CORRECT way to resolve the problem is to find the registry backup file and double click to merge the contents back into the registry.

When I went to do this I found that no System Restore files are shown even though I have run CCleaner on the registry and saved the file as well as there being a couple of updates recently.

System Restore is a computer activity.

Shopping on the Internet is a computer activity.

CCleaner saving of a backup is a computer activity.

They all do things on the computer but have very little interaction.

Your computer has a massive registry hives with thousands of registry keys

All that CCleaner Registry cleaning will do is purge a few of those many thousands of registry keys,

and ONLY backs up the few which it is deleting.

It makes no attempt at backing up entire registry hives.

System Restore HAS THE POTENTIAL ABILITY to restore the complete registry hive and also "System Files" to a previous state,

BUT System Restore can be disabled.

System Restore can be disabled by the user - this was my choice.

This does not affect my registry, it simply saves HDD space and CPU cycles creating backups that I never need.

There may be other causes such as a Windows Update gone wrong, or malware.

6

PLEASE NOTE THAT

when CCleaner makes a registry backup this is totally unrelated to to System Restore,

and the CORRECT way to resolve the problem is to find the registry backup file and double click to merge the contents back into the registry.

Alan_B can this be done from DOS?

7

Alan_B can this be done from DOS?

Possibly by running REG.EXE,

BUT even though I know my way around DOS that REG.EXE is something I prefer to avoid.

I do NOT recommend that a novice try it.

8

@mbriscoe:

If you made registry backups and can't find them now, try this:

Using windows explorer, search for this partial filename: cc_2014

Those are the first 7 characters of the default name assigned by CCleaner to a registry backup made in 2014.

If you find it, it should restore just by double clicking on it.

Different issue: CCleaner can be used to remove system restore points except for the last one.

If you removed them I don't know how to get them back, but the last one should still be there.

Welcome to the forum. Post up how it goes for you.

Members will help all they can even it it isn't a CCleaner issue.

9

How do you perform a system restore ? I've many restore points in my Doc's file and one on Restore link,

But if I click on it nothing happens, no other button or link that says restore back to this point ?

What's the trick, or is this just something like save restore points for nothing ?

10

maybe a Mod can put this into its own thread.

Windows does not keep restore points in your Documents folder but CC does, so I suspect they are the backups of the registry you have told CC to keep.

They should have the file extension of .REG, if so, simply double clicking them will import the registry entries it contains that would have been updated in the run of CC that created them.

If they don't end with .REG, how do you know they are restore points?

You will need to know which .REG file to restore if that's what you want to do and there are, as you say, many of them.

What is your OS?

One way in Win7 or 8 to 'go back in time' to a previous Restore Point (created by the system) is from Control Panel, System, System Protection, and clicking the System Restore button.