Deletion of restore points improvement

[Ishi]

Hi, I think there is a problem about the the way CCleaner deletes restore points. It cannot delete the latest restore point. I think the latest restore point is not always the best restore point so CCleaner should have the ability to delete any restore point, including the latest one except if there is only one restore point left. I want to delete the latest restore point because I manually created a restore point after I made some optimizations. I want to delete all restore points created besides the one I manually created.

[Augeas]

I don't think there is a problem, I seem to remember that all points could be deleted on the first implementation of this feature, but was quickly changed to preserve the latest point as a safety measure, just as Windows does.

 

Your last two sentences imply that you want to keep your latest user-created point, it's rather confusing.

 

Just wait a few hours and another point will be created and become the latest, and you can then get rid of the point you want to.

[Ishi]

Well I only want at least one restore point available and that would be the one I manually made. If your computer gets infected by a virus even before the latest restore point is created, better stick with the one you made yourself cause at least you know that when you made that restore point yourself, your computer is in good condition. And if your hard drive is small the amount of space is a matter of an issue so its not wise to have many restore points.

[ident]

If it was to delete the latest restore point, then there could be a potential danger from less experienced users to remove all points then encountering a problem and not being able to restore.

[Alan_B]

I really do not believe what M.$ say about System Restore.

 

There is absolutely no way that when you restore to a mid-point that you get a cumulative restore from the oldest R.P up to the selected R.P. because EVERY R.P. will hold the complete system state of the Registry as at the time of creation,

but NONE of the R.P. hold a multi-giga-byte image of your Windows System Files.

 

The only complete system state is the right now state of C:\, and when you use System Restore it uses change-logs and A0????.* files in the latest R.P to remove your latest file updates and to re-instate any previous versions,

and then it goes to the previous version to do the same again,

and keeps on until it reaches the R.P. you chose,

after which it copies the registry hives from the chosen R.P.

 

If you COMPLETELY delete the latest R.P. then System Restore will not be able to determine the latest changes and would possibly refuse to go back;

but if it did try it would probably introduce even more "features" than normal.

 

I will admit that I do not know if CCleaner does a COMPLETE deletion of a Restore Point (typically 60 MByte for me),

or if it merely cancels an entry in the Restore Point calendar and leaves behind 60 MByte of junk;

not what I would expect of an efficient file cleaner - but I read somewhere that this anomaly might exist.

 

Alan

[Augeas]

What you're saying then Alan is that if you delete any restore point than you can't vaidly restore to to prior point, as a RP in the chain is missing?

 

Or do Piriform know more than us punters, as CC allows us to do this?

[Ishi]

This is one of the things I hate most about Vista. The OS is working well for me but if I create a restore point then disable system protection so that no new restore points will be made automatically, my own restore point will be gone as well. Its just taking up too much space, especially when I install a new program. Why does every system restore point have to take at least 200-300MB space??? Its just wrong. Why didnt they just do it like in Windows XP and maybe improvise that a little bit better???

 

Vista also has hidden 70-80 MB backups that are created after some time. Its better if CCleaner can clean this as well.

[Alan_B]

What you're saying then Alan is that if you delete any restore point than you can't vaidly restore to to prior point, as a RP in the chain is missing?

 

I remember seeing a clue in a post in this forum that suggested to me that when CCleaner removes a Restore Point it has a quick poke somewhere so that the relevant pointer is cancelled and the System Restore calendar no longer offers that as a valid point.

Along with that I had the impression that the corresponding 60 MB folder, typically

C:\System Volume Information\_restore{F6EA6CAA-B744-447E-8F9E-B9A9507C7CB4}\RP1048

would not been damaged - in which case YOU CAN VALIDLY RESTORE TO remaining points prior to this, but you still have 60 MB of junk.

If however that impression is wrong, and the folder is removed, unless all its A0??????.??? files and change.log files are somehow preserved,

then A0273667.exe will no longer exist, and

change.log.7 will no longer tell me that it is a copy made before C:\Utils\TeraCopy\TeraCopy.exe was deleted.

Without A0273667.exe it will not be possible to restore the previous version of TeraCopy.exe,

and without change.log.7 there is no knowledge that C:\Utils\TeraCopy\TeraCopy.exe previously existed.

 

I could of course be wrong in my deductions, but I do not believe in magic.

I can accept that CCleaner might relocate A0273667.exe and change.log.7 to a previous R.P.,

but I would consider that to be most UNSAFE since Microsoft themselves are totally confused over whether or not Firefox Cache is "User data" to be excluded from a R.P.

 

I would appreciate a definitive answer from the developers upon what CCleaner actually does, and its consequences, when it takes out a Restore Point in the middle of a series.

 

Regards

Alan

[Augeas]

I would think that most users of this facility would be using it to reclaim hd space, or under the impression that it is reclaiming hd space (as the OP mentions). Piriform however say that it's a security feature, preventing someone from restoring to a previous undesired state. There's no mention of freeing any space, in fact they say that CC 'may not actually remove all files related to each point'. It looks as if only the 'pointer' is removed.

 

Personally I think it's too much of a faff, just set the sys restore space to the minumum figure and let Windows do the tidying up. Trying to do it manually on a moving target is pretty pointless. I was going to say restore pointless, but thought better of it.