System Restore in Windows Vista

To store restore points, you need at least 300 megabytes (MB) of free space on each hard disk that has System Protection turned on. System Restore might use up to 15 percent of the space on each disk. As the amount of space fills up with restore points, System Restore will delete older restore points to make room for new ones. System Restore will also not run on disks smaller than 1 GB, or on disks that are not formatted with the NTFS file system, meaning it will NOT work on FAT and FAT32 partitions because FAT disks don't support the use of shadow copies (which are required by System Restore).

The good thing about System Restore is that every time you use it to restore to an older restore point, a new restore point is created just before proceeding, so if something went wrong and you wanted to revert to the "original" state of your computer, you could undo the changes. However, i you use System Restore when the computer is in safe mode, you cannot undo the restore operation, and then you will need to run System Restore again and choose a different restore point if one exists.

Restoring to an older restore point

If something went wrong on your computer and you wanted to revert to an earlier restore point that was taken either automatically or manually, you can do so by using the System Restore application. Click on the Start button All Programs > Accessories > System Tools, or by typing rstrui.exe from the Run option

System Restore requires administrative permissions.

System Restore can be run and allowed to select the "best" restore point to which to restore your computer to, or it can be used to manually restore your computer's system files to an earlier point in time of your choice.

Just select "Choose a different restore point" and press Next
Note that the computer will reboot, so please make sure you save all your work before doing so.

Manually creating restore points

In order to manually create restore points you need to go to Control Panel > System, then click on the Advanced System Settings link on the left.

You can also access it by typing systempropertiesprotection.exe from the Run option.
In the System Properties tab press on the Create button.
You will be prompted to give the restore point a suitable name. Select one that'll allow you to easily remember why you thought it was important to keep it.
Press Create, and in a short while, after some thinking, the new restore point will have been created.

Restore points are saved until the hard disk space System Restore reserves is filled up. As new restore points are created, old ones are deleted, so do not expect this restore point you've just created to last long on your hard drive.