There are a few things that you can easily change about System Restore in Windows Vista and the most important ones that I’m sure most of you would like to change are: The amount of memory system restore uses, the default time between creating a restore point and last but not least when system restore should delete old restore points.
Well there is no need to worry about options such as these, below I will show you how to change all these options to better suit your needs.
We will be editing the registry values if you don’t know what you are doing or have worries please don’t follow these tutorials and even if you do make sure you complete a backup of the registry first to ensure you can fix anything that may accidently go wrong.
Ok First I will show you how to bring up the registry, you will need to follow these steps for each of the tutorials below.
• Click on Start (Vista Logo, Bottom left)
• Type into the search box regedit
• Click on Regedit
I’ll be referring to HKLM in the tutorials below if you are wondering why you can’t see this in your registry it is because it’s the shorter version of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
1. Adjust the Default Time Between Automatic Restore Points
(The default is every 24 hours, if you are using a system and making a number of changes all the time you may want to make this shorter or in some cases you may want to make the gap longer)
• Navigate to:
• HKLM\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\SystemRestore
• Double Click RPGGlobalInterval
• Check/Select Decimal
The default value is 86400 which is 24 hours I’ll give you a few options you could enter below but the choice is yours dependent upon your needs.
• 21600 (6 hours)
• 43200 (12 hours)
• 86400 (24 hours)
• 172800 (2 days)
• 259200 (3 days)
• Change the Value to one that you are happy with and Click Ok
• Restart your computer
2. How to Change the amount of Disk Space System Restore can use.
(The Default is 15%, I would like to point out now that editing the registry can cause adverse affects. Only follow these steps if you know what you are doing or have made a good backup, use your own judgement)
• Navigate to:
• HKLM\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\SystemRestore\Cfg
• Double Click DiskPercent
• Check/Select Decimal
• Change the vale in the value data box
(The Default is 15 and is measured in a Percentage %, meaning the default is 15%. If you put in 5 it would be 5%, also make sure the percentage you choose is going to give system restore more than 300MB or else system restore will not work. I hope this is clear)
• Once you have changed the Value to a percentage that is more acceptable to you Click Ok
• Now Close Regedit
• It’s always a good idea to restart after making changes to the registry
3. Change the Default Time of Deletion for Old System Restore Files
(The default deletion time for old system restore files is over 130 years! Which means they are only going to be deleted with system restore is using its max aloud memory so it’s able to create a new restore point. This is really not ideal so I’m going to show you how to change this, in Windows XP this time was set to 90 days.)
• Navigate to:
• HKLM\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\SystemRestore
• Double Click RPLifeInterval
• Check/Select Decimal
The default value is 4294967295 (136 years) I’ll give you some values to work with below
• 2592000 (30 days)
• 5184000 (60 days)
• 7776000 (90 days) This was the default in Windows XP
• Once you have entered your desired value Click OK
• Restart your computer.
I thought that these registry edits would be the most useful to you and the most commonly asked for edits, I hope they have helped you take some control back over your computer.
