Turn off or disable System Restore

System Restore is a built-in feature of Windows XP and Windows Vista that basically takes a snapshot of the current state of your operating system in a working state so that the computer can be restored in case of any corruption or deletion of system files.

It’s useful if you have a computer that you are not currently backing up to some sort of external device. And even if you are, it’s useful in case you install a bad Windows driver that causes the computer to crash and burn. Recovering from that is as simple as restoring the system state.

Yet if you want to turn off System Restore because it’s eating up too much space or you simply do not need it, here’s how you would do it.

Turn off System Restore

Right-click on My Computer and go to Properties. This will bring up the System Properties dialog box. You can also go to the Control Panel and click on System.

Next click on the System Restore tab and you’ll see a box at the bottom that shows which drives are being monitored by System Restore. If you want to turn it off completely for all drives, check the box “Turn off System Restore on all drives”.

Click OK and you’re done. If you’re turning it off because you know what you are doing, good for you. However, if you are turning it off just to stop if from taking up hard drive space or because you read it slows down your system, I would suggest you leave it on! It’s come in very handy for me several times!

And if you want it to take up less hard drive space, simple click on the drive letter and then click on Settings.

Currently, my System Restore file is taking up a whopping 5GB’s! That’s way too much and certainly can be reduced. By default, Windows sets the value at 12%, which would be almost 12GB’s on my computer! I would suggest making sure you give System Restore about 2GB of space, so whatever percentage equals 2GB. Enjoy!