There was a comment/question in one of my old blog post that I thought would be a good idea to talk about in a blog post. The question:

“I need to recover some space on  my Windows Vista computer. I did all that I can think of doing but there is XX gigs in system restore that I cant delete. How do I delete that space?”

System restore is one of those features that I usually enable and leave alone. In Windows XP you can assign how much space you want to allocate to be used for system restore. In Vista, that space is allocated automatically. So what do you do to delete those files if you need the space. Well there is 2 ways of doing so, both are pretty simple but Im going to go through both.

Deleting system restore points in Vista:  1st way.

The easiest way is to just turn off system restore, reboot, then turn it back on (rebooting is optional). When you turn off system restore, Vista deletes all of the previously made restore points.

Click on start, then control panel, then System. Or you can click on start and type “system” and pick system from the search results (make sure you pick “system” not “system restore”)

From the System window, Click “System Protection”

In the new window that pops up, click on the “system Protection” tab and uncheck any drive you have checked.

This will shut off system restore on those drives, You will get a message warning you that all of your restore points will be deleted. Click ok, then Apply, then ok. You have turned off system restore and deleted all of your system restore points freeing up that space. You can turn it back on if you want and it will start creating restore points again.

Deleting system restore points in Vista:  Second way.

There is a second way to do pretty much the same thing. Click start, type “clean” in the search bar and pick “disk cleanup”. You will get a window asking which drive you want to clean, pick the drive you want to clean up.

Next. click on the “more” tab. Click on “clean up” under the System restore and shadow copies section of that tab.

You will get a message saying that all but the most recent restore point will be deleted. Click ok.

Like I said, Both ways are pretty simple, but not everyone would think to look.

Things to note: The first way deletes all of your restore points. the second way deletes all but the most recent.