Windows 7 System Restore Problems

Dave McKeen

Senior Member
Hello, I am running Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit in Classic mode. My system specs are listed below my signature.

Before installing a program today I went to create a system restore point. In System Properties > System Protection I see that in Protection Settings > Available Drives there are two instances of drive C: labeled like this:

HDD0(C) (System) Protection On (selected)
HDD0(C) (Missing) Protection On

This is most likely due to having recently replaced my C: drive with a larger capacity drive using Restore from a System Image Backup. The installation appeared to be successful. (I'm using it now!)

Note: other drives in the system are showing Protection Off.

When I clicked "Configure" in System Properties > System Protection I saw that in Restore Settings the radio button "Turn off active Protection" was selected. I set the radio button to "Restore system settings and previous versions of files." In Disk Space Usage the slider was set to 0. I set it to 1% (857.54MB).

When I tried to exit the System Protection for HDD0 (C) dialog box I got this error:

There was an unexpected error in the property page:
The filename, directory name or volume label syntax is incorrect. (0x8007007B)
Please close the property page and try again.

I deleted all restore points then created a new restore point. Current Usage now shows 29.48MB. I still get the error when I try to OK out of the dialog box. When I click System Restore and start the Restore wizard I can see the restore point I just created.

Any help banishing the bogus Available Drive and error message will be appreciated greatly.

- Dave

ASUS P7P55 Deluxe
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750
Corsair CMX8GX3M4A1600C9 (4 DIMM x 2GB)
ZOTAC ZT-98GES3M-FSL GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16
Drive0 (OS) OCZ SSD Agility 2 OCZSSD2-2AGTE90G 2.5" 90GB SATA II
Drive1 (Data) HITACHI UltraStar A7K2000 0F10452 2TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
Drive2 (Apps, pagefile, misc.) OCZ SSD Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTX50G 50GB
Drive3 (Web data, Pgm setup files) OCZ SSD Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTX50G 50GB
 
I have restored a system image several times and never seen what you have. Perhaps it has something to do with the SSD, I do not know.

If you open device manager, what does it show for that drive as far as partitions?

Normally, restoring an image will wipe the drive prior to restoring, but it appears you have something left over, or the image had some type of corruption when you made the image.
 
Hey zvit- thanks for that research. I'll put it through the wringer in the morning and report back.

Saltgrass- In Disk Management the C: drive looks like a normal Windows 7 boot drive. It's got the 100MB System Reserve partition with the remaining capacity (83.74 GB) allocated to C: boot partition. No other partitions.

Any ideas on how to proceed? Diagnostics?

Thanks, - Dave
 
You might try turn off System restore and then do a cold reboot. Then try turning it back on to see if it changes.

I found two entries in the registry that contained the name of my partitions. You might check these for your setup and see if the other/ or an additional listing is contained in either location. If you find something, post back and we will discuss it, unless you feel brave.;)

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\SPP\Clients

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search\VolumeInfoCache\C:
 
I personally do not like System restore, I do a scheduled daily full backup using the W7 backup feature in Pro and above. I also do a weekly backup using Macrium Reflect. Each backup is to separate internal hard drives.
In fact I use CC Cleaner to wipe out all System restore files except for the last one and CC Cleaner will not wipe that one out.
 
Hey zvit! Your first research result (Dell support) did the trick for me! YAY!! The System Properties dialog box is different than Vista's, but the support link gave me the leads I needed to zap the bogus drive. After I did that the error message OK'ing out of the Configure dialog [System Protection for HDD0(C)] went away.

I had forgotten to mention- prior to making this PC my main computer a system restore would fail every time I tried it. I had to press this PC into service before resolving that problem. HOWEVER, now system restore works without error. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Thanks Saltgrass for the input. I appreciate it very much. In
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SPP\Clients
I find
{09F7EDC5-294E-4180-AF6A-FB0E6A0E9513}
{3E7F07C9-6BC3-11DC-A033-0019B92BB8B1}
{2C386BD1-5061-4E2B-A0CF-2223845E61C2}
The Data in Regedit for the first two entries looks identical. I don't know how to copy that data to paste in here. Would a picture do?

In
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search\VolumeInfoCache\C:HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows
Search\
I don't have a
VolumeInfoCache\C:
entry. Only a Preferences folder.

Does this warrant further investigation? And no, I'm not all that brave. :)

- Dave
 
No longer important since you got it fixed. I was looking there just in case something had gotten stuck and could not be removed otherwise. Glad you got it working.
 
You can try this:
How resolve the error 0x8007007B when I run System Restore in Microsoft

Here's another solution, thought it didn't help the asker, you can try it:
Link Removed - Invalid URL

More help:
Backup fails with error 0x8007007B - Page 4 - Windows 7 Forums

I found a fairly easy solution for one of my users on a Win 7 Ult PC
Go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SPP\Clients
Leave the default key but delete the rest.
Then go back to system protection and it will show off.
Turn it on and set the size.
This will re-create the keys. and the errors will go away.
I had to make this change after cloning the user to a new hard drive using Acronis Migrate Easy.
Hope this helps
Philip
MCSE, MCSA, CCNA
 
I found a fairly easy solution for one of my users on a Win 7 Ult PC
Go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SPP\Clients
Leave the default key but delete the rest.
Then go back to system protection and it will show off.
Turn it on and set the size.
This will re-create the keys. and the errors will go away.
I had to make this change after cloning the user to a new hard drive using Acronis Migrate Easy.
Hope this helps
Philip

Man that was just the ticket worked like a charm thanks PhilipW..I know this post has gray whiskers but it helped glad it was still up!
 
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