Q: Why does the system restore not work in Windows 7? I’ve tried to carry out a restore, but get the error message – System Restore Error (0×80070057).
This appears to be a fairly common error as a quick visit to Google will demonstrate. However some of the workarounds coming out of Microsoft are quite appalling, and none of them work. What’s suggested is: uninstall your antivirus software and then run system restore. Do the above but in addition use Safe Mode and then do system restore. Or run CHKDSK/R.
How is it that every time Microsoft produces a new version of Windows that something serious happens? You don’t get much more serious than being unable to run a system restore. My install was a totally cold load of Windows 7 Ultimate. Everything else appears to be working fine. Any help would be appreciated or even better an update patch from Microsoft to solve the problem.
A: Up to a point you have to sympathise with Microsoft. Operating systems are complicated things and it’s impossible to reproduce in testing all the conditions they’re likely to encounter on millions of different user configurations. And this isn’t unique to Windows, you only have to visit a few Linux message boards to see the number of workarounds and tweaks required to get various systems working.
The 0×80070057 error is fairly generic and can have various causes so it doesn’t really give you a clue as to how to pin down the problem. In many cases this seems to be a conflict with antivirus software, however, there are some other things to try. First of all turn off system protection for the drive. To do this click Start, right-click on Computer and select Properties. Click System protection over on the left, and in the Properties window click the System Protection tab. Select the drive, click the Configure button and turn off protection. Check to see if you still have a problem. Turning off system protection will prevent Windows from automatically generating restore points, though they can still be created manually.
It’s also worth running the System File Checker to make sure none of your Windows system files are corrupt. To do this go to Start, All Programs, Accessories, right-click on Command prompt and select Run as administrator. In the command window type sfc /scannow. The scan will take a little while to complete and should automatically fix any errors.
System Restore can roll back your OS and application settings to a particular point in time
Originally featured in PCU126
