I used to have the option, in Vista Home Premium System Restore, to click a box that said "Show restore points older than 5 days." Suddenly it is no longer there. Does anyone know why this is or how I can get that back? There have been a couple of times when I've needed to go back further to restore my system so I am concerned about this. Thanks

Hi That option will only show up if there are actually any restore points that are older than 5 days. If you have recently installed any major updates, such as Service Pack 1, all of the older restore points would have been deleted, since using any of these could potentially corrupt the system. There are many scenarios where older restore points may be removed. Each restore point depends on all of the newer restore points that are created. If a newer restore point is deleted, then the older restore points may also be removed, since they can no longer be used. One thing to remember is that System Restore is not a backup solution. It can only return the system state to a previous point in time, by removing all of the changes that were made to system files after that time. Hope this helps.If this post helps to resolve your issue, click the Mark as Answer button at the top of this message. Ronnie Vernon Microsoft MVP Windows Desktop Experience

There were definitely many restore points older than 5 days. I have not installed SP1. I know SR is not a backup option. I have Acronis True Image and an external hard drive that I use for that. I should have had restore points to show for as far back as SR will keep them. I've done a lot of googling on this trying to find an answer and I noticed that there are others having this same problem. Can you offer any other advice as to what happened just all of a sudden to change things like this? I am running BitDefender Internet Security 2008 and I do a scan nearly every time I run my computer. I also do extra spyware checking with other programs that I just run on demand. I don't have any real time protection enabled for these programs and don't run them at start up because I'm told they wouldn't run well alongside BitDefender. Thanks

Hi Missing restore points is not usually a sign of any infection. This is the way that system restore works. It is constantly updating and creating restore points on a daily basis. When the maximum space allocated to SR is approached, it will start making more room by deleting older restore points. This allocated space is also shared by the 'Previous Version' component, if you have Vista Business or Ultimate. If you have a lot of older restore points that are small in size, it may delete several of these to make room for a new, larger restore point. All of this depends on how heavily the systemwasbeing used in the previous 24 hours prior to when the restore pointwas created. Restore points are also created by most installation programs and by Windows Update. I use my Vista system "very" heavily and I rarely see any restore points older than 5 days. For a complete and comprehensive tutorial on SR, go to the following website. Click the 'System Restore in Vista' drop down menu at the top of the page. System Restore in Windows Vista: http://bertk.mvps.org/html/vista.html Hope this helps. If this post helps to resolve your issue, click the Mark as Answer button at the top of this message. Ronnie Vernon Microsoft MVP Windows Desktop Experience