How To Turn Off System Restore

Looking to gain some quick memory and hard drive space? Problems with viruses? Whatever the reason, this article will tell you how to shut off System Restore. A program installed on Windows operating systems that uses technology called "Shadow Copy" which waits for changes on your computer and runs in the background. When your computer makes a change, the program makes a copy of certain parts of the Windows environment so that you can revert back to make changes if necessary. System Restore is installed on Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows ME.

Unfortunately, viruses can store themselves in the area reserved for System Restore. From here viruses can utilize themselves and at the same time be able to survive if the user uses System Restore to try to get rid of it. This could be why you've come looking to disable System Restore. Or maybe you just want to save a little memory and get back some of the reserved hard drive space. Here is how to toggle (turn off or on), system restore or change change settings. To turn off just repeat the steps and uncheck the box.

Windows Millennium
1. Go to Start, and then "Control Panel"
2. Click on the Performance icon and then File System.
3. Click on Troubleshooting at the top of the window.
4. You should see the option "Disable System Restore", check the box.
5. Click Ok and restart.

Windows XP
1. Right Click "My Computer" on your desktop, or click Start and it will be listed in the menu.
2. Click Properties, and above the General tab click the System Restore tab.
3. Click the check box "Turn Off System Restore on all drives"

Windows Vista
1. Click Start/
2. In the menu, click Control Panel/
3. Locate and click "System and Maintenance," in this window go to the left and click "System Protection." NOTE: You may have to enter administrator account Info.
4. Your hard drive or drives will be listed with a check next to the ones with System Restore enabled. To disable, uncheck these boxes and on the prompt click "Turn System Restore Off."

Remember, System Restore is inoperable until you recheck one of the boxes again and let it make another restore point. You can always load the window that deals with System Restore and change the setting that lists with how much space should be left for System Restore, rather than disabling it.