UVK 7.1.1.0 System Booster, "Create restore point" failure

[steve2189]

Computer is Windows 8.1 Pro

How to reproduce bug:
UVK / System Booster / Create Restore Point
"Are you sure ...?" Yes
"System restore point ... successfully created"
- the 'successful' dialog box pops up immediately - much too fast for create restore point to have had time to complete successfully.

Control Panel / System / System Protection / System Restore
Look at the list of restore points - no new restore point has been created.

System restore is enabled and working on this machine - I created a restore point before doing the test above, and created another restore point after the test above, and both worked OK.

[Fred]

Hi Steve.

Starting with Windows 8, System restore points are limited to 1 restore point each 24 h, by default. To change that limit we need to change a registry value.

From MSDN:

Windows 8:
A new registry key enables application developers to change the frequency of restore-point creation.
Applications should create this key to use it because it will not preexist in the system. The following applies by default if the key does not exist. If an application calls the SRSetRestorePoint function to create a restore point, Windows skips creating this new restore point if any restore points have been created in the last 24 hours. System Restore sets the IISequenceNumber member of the STATEMGRSTATUS structure to the sequence number for the restore point created previously in the day and sets the value of the nStatus member to ERROR_SUCCESS. The SRSetRestorePoint function returns TRUE.
Developers can write applications that create the DWORD value SystemRestorePointCreationFrequency under the registry key HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SystemRestore. The value of this registry key can change the frequency of restore point creation.
If the application calls SRSetRestorePoint to create a restore point, and the registry key value is 0, system restore does not skip creating the new restore point.
If the application calls SRSetRestorePoint to create a restore point, and the registry key value is the integer N, system restore skips creating a new restore point if any restore points were created in the previous N minutes.

UVK is not creating that value, because I think a restore point each 24h is more than enough. Restore points use a big amount of HDD space, and having a system restore point everyday is fine.

[steve2189]

Hi Fred,
I just tested on a Windows 7 computer and it worked OK, so it was looking like a Windows 8 issue.

The UVK "successful" message is incorrect, Windows/UVK was only "successful" in ignoring my request to create a restore point!
It would be useful to popup a window to say something like
"System restore request ignored since last restore point was < 24h ago"

Starting with Windows 8, System restore points are limited to 1 restore point each 24 h, by default. To change that limit we need to change a registry value.

But when you manually create restore points from Windows 8, it does let you create 2 restore points one after the other, It does not skip the second restore point.
So I guess Windows itself creates the registry key to force the second system restore point to complete - to override the new default behavior!

UVK is not creating that value, because I think a restore point each 24h is more than enough. Restore points use a big amount of HDD space, and having a system restore point everyday is fine.

I don't think that restore points necessarily use large amounts of disk space.
I think system restore points use file versioning which is built into the filesystem (and used by the File History backup system), and restore points only save the differences made since the last restore point. So if not many changes were made then the restore point uses very little HDD space.

[Fred]

Steve,

Windows 8 lets you create 2 restore points one after the other because it sets the SystemRestorePointCreationFrequency value to 0 before creating the restore point, and then restores the previous value. That's very easy to do. I'm not doing it only because, like I said, I think one restore point each 24h is more than enough.

But OK, I will make UVK create the restore point always, just like Windows does. UVK says the restore point was successfully created because the call to SRSetRestorePoint returned TRUE, meaning Success.

Restore points always take a snapshot of the registry, so they will always use at least several hundreds of MB, even if they do not contain any files (i.e a restore point was created not long before). You can test that out by creating a restore point, checking out the HDD space used, and then deleting the restore point from UVK and checking the HDD space again.

No prob, The next UVK version will create the restore points always.

[steve2189]

Hi Fred,
During a virus removal I sometimes find it useful to create multiple restore points.

You might create one at the start, one when you have removed the virus, and one at the end after you repair damage left by the virus. If something goes wrong towards the end, and you only have one restore point to go back to, you would have to repeat most of the virus removal procedure again.

Thanks for investigating the problem.

[Charger440]

Fred just to clarify, your only forcing the restore point when we actually select restore point right?

I usually do not use restore points so I would not want to restore all the time.

Jim