[panda095]

I have a Toshiba Tecra A5, pentium M 1.75 Mhz, 1 Gb RAM, WinXP pro SP3, and have the following problem: I can not disable System Restore nor configure its properties for selective drives because the disabling option in the System Restore Label appears greyed and not active (it says disabled by directive)

I have opened gpedit.msc and reached "Hardware Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\System Restore\Disable System Restote and ...\.\Disable Configuration; both are set as Not Configurated. I have not been able to find other directive which related to System Restore.

I would be much obliged if anyone could tell me how to re-emable System Restore deactivation

Thanks in advance

[Rollin' Rog]

Check the registry directly, there are actually 2 different values which can evidently be used to disable it -- run regedit and navigate to:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\SystemRestore]

Anything there at all?

You can try entering the values manually and see if they hold up.


If that doesn't get it be sure to quote exactly the message you see or provide a screenshot.

By the way unless you have other recovery options I really don't recommend disabling System Restore

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\SystemRestore]
Name: DisableConfig, DisableSR
Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value: (1 = enable restriction)

Also run services.msc and find SR service there -- see if you can stop, disable, or start the service manually.

[panda095]

Thanks Rollin' Rog for your prompt answer.

I really don't want to fully quit System Restore. What I need is to mantain it for my C: drive and disable it for my D., E: and F: drives (data and multimedia files which are backed-up with a dedicates back-up program)

Through your registry suggestion or by the directive modification, I can completly disable system restore, which I don't want. I need to activate the disabling box in the System Restore Label of System Properties.

[Rollin' Rog]

Does the Restore properties on the drives you want it disabled on say turned off or on?

I don't know why it would be greyed out unless your backup utility is overriding it somehow.

Is "disabled by directive" an exact quote?

[panda095]

System Restore is active and running for all drives. What is greyed and disabled is the option for diactivating System Restore for all drives and the individual setting for each drive as shown on attached images. So this is the problem: I can not activate the option to disable System Restore and to change the individual setting for each drive

[Rollin' Rog]

I don't know what could be causing that unless it is seeing those drives as a system drive or partition.

Are any of them external drives? If you attach a USB drive -- does the same problem exist?

[panda095]

When I atach an external drive, the same problem exist. The strange thing is that some time ago, I could select deactivation of all my data drives, which I did. Now something happened that changed this. I don't think that upgrading Office or installing normal software could have caused this change. The only main modification of the OS is the recent Service Pack 3 and all the security upgrades that windows does. Can be this last issue the reason of this situation? Anyway, I think the solution for this is to find the parameter that controls the activation/deactivation of the System Restore deactivation box

[Rollin' Rog]

I have SP3 and haven't seen this.

It's the "disableconfig" value you should be looking for in the registry.

In addition to the location listed in a preivious post (was anything there?), there is this --

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore

However I have one drive excluded and I can't see any change in the values listed in it.

edit I copied that HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\SystemRestore key from Windows Registry Guide, it may be wrong -- this one shows up on my system:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SystemRestore

[panda095]

I finally solved my problem. I did 2 things:

- First, I launched gpedit.msc and searched for Administrative Templates\System\System Restore, and configured both Deactivate System Restore and Deactivate Configuration as Enabled (they were previously both as Not Configurated), then rebooted. Now, System Restore Label does not appear an the Properties of My PC
- Second, I disabled bot directives and now I can configure each drive except C: Also, the Deactivation of System Restore for all units option in My PC Properties continues greyed and inactive
- Finally, I opened the Registry as suggested by another technical advise, and deleted the System Restore folder under HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT . Now the Deactivation of System Restore for all units option in My PC Properties is active and working.

I still don't know what made the change in the system policies or group directives, but the result is that my system is in "normal condition" again. I posted this for any other person who experiences such a weird situation as windows frecuently offers.

Thanks Rollin'Rog for your interest and help.

[Rollin' Rog]

Glad to hear it is solved and you can mark the thread so using the availabe tab.

The registry location is what I was pointing to in an earlier post. Normally there is nothing there unless a policy has been set.