How to Allow Windows 10 to Create System Restore Points More Frequently

[tarekma7]

In Windows 10, it’s better to be safe than sorry, and this is exactly why you need to create system restore points as frequently as possible.

The latest Patch Tuesday rollout is living proof that it takes just a single update to completely ruin the Windows experience, as the number of botched updates this month increased substantially. Failed installs, ghost network adapters, and broken document support are all the results of botched updates shipped this month to Windows systems.

Creating backups isn’t rocket science, especially because Windows 10 itself comes with such functionality integrated. By default, Windows can automatically create system restore points, which allow you to return to a previous configuration easily.

Restore points can be automatically generated whenever you install a new app or update or make system modifications, but only if a pre-defined time setting has expired. In other words, a restore point can be automatically created only if no other restore point has already been created within the configured time.

By default, Windows uses 24 hours for automatic system restore point generation, so installed apps and updates can’t create a new restore point unless more than 24 hours have passed since the previous backup.

This is a restriction that gives you more control over your backups because you can always go back one day, but at the same time, also prevents restore point from eating up all your storage.



While there are no dedicated options to configure the system restore point creation frequency, you can actually adjust this time from the registry settings. This means you can create automatic restore points as often as you want by changing the default settings.

To do this, the first thing you should take care of is creating a manual backup because the method involves changing Windows Registry settings, and doing this could affect system stability and performance in case something goes wrong. Manual restore points aren’t affected by the time limitation mentioned above.

Launch the Windows Registry by typing regedit in the Start menu and hit Enter. An administrator account is required, so if you’re logged in with a standard account, you won’t be able to make any changes.

Once you’re in the Registry Editor, go the following path (note that you don’t have to browse each folder manually, as the Fall Creators Update comes with its own address bar and you can just paste the whole path there):



Look for an entry called SystemRestorePointCreationFrequency and double-click it to change its value. As I said, the default time is 24 hours, but in the Registry Editor, Windows uses minutes as units. This means the default configuration should be 1440, and you can change it to pretty much any time you want.

Also, if you don’t want such a restriction to exist on your system, you can configure the SystemRestorePointCreationFrequency to value 0, which means that restore points would be automatically created whenever it’s required.

BONUS TIP: If the path mentioned above does not exist, it means System Restore is not enabled on your computer. You first need to enable System Restore to be able to change the settings. Also, if the SystemRestorePointCreationFrequency is missing from the path mentioned above, you can manually create it.

To do this, right-click the right-side of the Registry Editor and go to New > DWORD (32-bit) Value and name the new entry SystemRestorePointCreationFrequency. Double-click it to change the value by typing down the number of minutes and you’re good to go.

Although the changes should be made once you close the Registry Editor, you’re recommended to reboot your system because System Restore might already be running when you adjust the default time. Log in again with your administrator account and the new configured time should already be in effect.

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