Create a Windows Restore Point in Command Prompt or PowerShell

The Windows operating system uses restore points, which are used to “roll back” the operating system to a previous working state of the computer. Unfortunately, no one is immune from problems in the operation of Windows.

When working on a PC, malfunctions and failures occur due to various reasons, including incorrect actions of the user himself. Because of this, the stable operation of the system is disrupted on the computer.

There are several ways to solve the problem, depending on the situation. One of the easiest options is to restore the system from a pre-created restore point.

The user can independently create a Windows restore point at any convenient time. This action will save the state of the operating system that it had at a given time.

A pre-created OS restore point will help to avoid unpleasant situations, for example, those associated with the negative impact of unknown software that disrupts the normal functioning of the system after installing such programs on a computer. To resolve this issue, the user needs to run a Windows System Restore using one of the available restore points.

Self-creation of breakpoints is usually performed directly from the graphical interface of the Windows operating system. Another option is also possible: to create a restore point, use the command line or Windows PowerShell.

These system tools allow you to create a restore point without using the built-in GUI application.

How to check the operation of system protection

First, you need to make sure that system protection is enabled on your computer. Without using this feature, Windows restore points will not be created on this PC.

Do the following:

1. Press the “Win” + “R” keys.
2. In the Run dialog box, enter the command: “SystemPropertiesProtection” (without quotes).
3. Press the “Enter” key.
4. In the “System Properties” window, in the “System Protection” tab, check if the protection of the system drive is enabled, usually it is “Local Disk (C:)”.
5. Click the “Configure…” button to enable system protection if it has been disabled on the computer.
6. If necessary, change the amount of disk space used by the system protection feature.

Now, on the computer, you can create restore points through the command line, PowerShell, or using the system tool in graphical mode.

Changes in the frequency of creating restore points

In some cases, the Windows operating system does not allow you to create new restore points on your computer. This is due to the default limitation that a new restore point can only be created 24 hours after the previous restore point was created.

It is possible to bypass this limitation in order to be able to create more restore points without a time limit.

You can solve the time limit problem by changing the settings in the Windows system registry. If you do not need such frequent creation of Windows restore points, do not change the system settings, which are described below.

Go through the steps:

1. Launch Windows Registry Editor .
2. Follow the path:

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

3. Right click on “System Restore”.
4. In the context menu that opens, select “New”, and then “DWORD (32-bit) Value”.
5. Name the created parameter: “SystemRestorePointCreationFrequency”. By default, the parameter has a value of “0”.

How to create a restore point via command line

To perform all the necessary steps to create a restore point, we will be helped by the built-in system tool – the Windows command line.

To create a Windows 10 restore point from the command line, run the following:

1. Run Command Prompt as Administrator .
2. In the command line interpreter window, enter the command:

wmic.exe /Namespace:\\root\default Path SystemRestore Call CreateRestorePoint "MyRestorePointName", 100, 7

In quotes, instead of “MyRestorepointName”, there can be any other name for the checkpoint being created.

3. Press the “Enter” key.
4. After a while, the process of creating a Windows restore point on the command line will complete successfully.

Create a Windows 10 restore point in PowerShell

In a similar way, to solve our problem in Windows 10, you can use another, more powerful system tool – Windows PowerShell.

Do the following:

1. Right click on the start menu.
2. Select “Windows PowerShell (Admin)” from the context menu.
3. In the running shell window, run the command:

Checkpoint-Computer -Description "RestorePoint" -RestorePointType "MODIFY_SETTINGS"

4. The PowerShell window displays the progress of this operation.

Create a shortcut to start creating a restore point from PowerShell

Some users find it inconvenient to launch Windows PowerShell and then type commands into a shell window. The solution to this problem can be to create a special shortcut on the Desktop or in another convenient place, which will start the process of creating a restore point.

Go through the following steps:

1. Right-click on an empty space on the desktop.
2. In the context menu, first select “Create” and then “Shortcut”.
3. In the “Create Shortcut” window, in the “Specify the location of the object:” field, enter the following command:

powershell -Command "Start-Process powershell.exe -ArgumentList '-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -NoExit -Command \"Checkpoint-Computer -Description \"RestorePoint\" -RestorePointType \"MODIFY_SETTINGS\"\"' -Verb RunAs"

4. In the next window, set a name for this shortcut.

Checking created Windows restore points

You can run the regular Windows Restore tool on your computer to check for newly created system restore points.

You can see the created restore points using third-party software – applications designed to optimize Windows.

For example, in the popular CCleaner program, all created restore points can be viewed as follows:

1. Launch CCleaner on your computer.
2. In the main window of the application, open the “Tools” section, and then enter the “System Restore” tab.
3. In the field for managing all restore points, among others, only recently created restore points are displayed.

Article Conclusions

If the computer is experiencing problems or system failures, the user can use the Windows Restore feature. Recovery to a healthy state of the operating system is performed using pre-created restore points.

The user can manually create a Windows restore point using the system’s GUI tool, or perform this operation at the command prompt or in Windows PowerShell. You can create a shortcut to manually run the command to create a Windows restore point using PowerShell.