System Restore points deleted at boot

John Brel 141 Reputation points
2021-03-01T12:17:39.94+00:00

Fresh Windows installation (Windows 10 20H2),  with a partition C: of about 140 GB, and partition D: with the remaining space (2 TB total). My problem is that restore points get deleted every time I boot. So far I found out that this coincides with an error in the Volume Shadow Service. When I look at the Logs > System I see a 'volsnap' error with the following message: "The shadow copies of volume C: were deleted because the shadow copy storage could not grow in time.  Consider reducing the IO load on the system or choose a shadow copy storage volume that is not being shadow copied." The event Id is 25. The thing is, my C partition has around 55 GB of data and 85 GB of empty space. And system restore points cannot be located to another drive AFAIK. Please advise - what can I do to restore uhm... system restore? Does anyone have any ideas?

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Windows 10: A Microsoft operating system that runs on personal computers and tablets.Security: The precautions taken to guard against crime, attack, sabotage, espionage, or another threat.
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  1. John Brel 141 Reputation points
    2021-03-02T12:33:58.117+00:00

    It seems I have found the culprit. I read something about someone having the same problem –restore points deleted at boot time - with a dual boot of Windows 7 and Windows 10. So I checked MSCONFIG and indeed I found out that I had somehow 2 Windows 10 boot options, like in the picture:
    73461-msconfig-3.png

    I will record here the steps I took to remedy this as it might hopefully help someone running into this problem. The volsnap error could have been clearer, even though it pointed me to the right direction.

    The only tricky bit was to remove the redundant versions. If you choose 'delete' in MSCONFIG, this will not permanently remove them. As soon as you select ‘Normal’ at the General tab page, the boot options will return. That’s why we need BCDEDIT in an elevated Command Prompt. (Elevated = run as administrator).
    The first thing I did was to make a back-up of the BCD store: 

    bcdedit /export filepath\filename

    (Restoring would be easy with: bcdedit /import filepath\filename)
    Then I listed all boot entries of the BCD store with bcdedit /enum.
    I then noted the identifier of the entry I wanted removed and issued the following command: 

    bcdedit /delete {identifier}

    It will look like this: 

    bcdedit /delete {b1ab1ab1a7564-11eb-b3ee-cc3794145ee2}

    And it indeed, so far my restore points are intact after several reboots!

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  1. Reza-Ameri 16,831 Reputation points
    2021-03-01T16:58:39.43+00:00

    Are you using HDD hard disk?
    If yes, try run system file check:

    chkdsk /r

    In case problem persist, open start and search for feedback and open the Feedback Hub app and report this issue.

  2. Jenny Feng 14,076 Reputation points
    2021-03-02T03:15:57.573+00:00

    Hi,
    You could check the settings if there is a limitation set.
    You could change it to unlimited.
    73234-image.png
    73253-image.png
    The following command on the host in order to place the shadow copy on another disk; drive letters need to be changed accordingly:

    vssadmin add shadowstorage /For=D: /On=E: /MaxSize=UNBOUNDED
    vssadmin resize shadowstorage /For=D: /On=E: /MaxSize=UNBOUNDED

    Or you can modify the System Performance by Adjusting the Page File to 1.5 times the amount of RAM:

    Open System in Control Panel.
    On the Advanced tab, under Performance, click Settings.
    On the Advanced tab, under Virtual memory, click Change.
    Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the paging file you want to change.
    Under Paging file size for selected drive, click Custom size, and type a new paging file size in megabytes in the Initial size (MB) or Maximum size (MB) box, and then click Set.

    This will have only an effect after a reboot.
    Hope above information can help you.

    ============================================

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