In a previous tip I showed you how to restore a file, which relies on System Restore. Vista automatically creates a restore point once a day, and also when updates and some software and drivers are installed. If you want to change the once a day to be more or less frequent, it is possible, but will require modifying your registry. I must always mention that incorrectly modifying your registry can cause problems, and could even prevent your machine from functioning all together, so BE CAREFUL!
- Open the Start menu and type
regeditin the search box.
- Choose Regedit from the program list that is found. You’ll need to approve UAC if it is enabled.
- Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SystemRestore
- Doube-click RPGlobalInterval in the right pane.
- Change the Base from Hexidecimal to Decimal. This will make entering a value much easier (unless you know hexidecimal, then have at!)

- The default value is 86400, which is the number of seconds in 24 hours. Change this value to the number of second you would like between automatic restore points. I’ll change mine to 12 hours (43200).
- Click OK, close Regedit, you’re done!

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Comments
LR
Jul 10, 2007 at 5:17 am
Thanks for the tip! System restore was using my loud hard drive at around 80% usage randomly and was driving me insane!
Joe
Jul 10, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Wow, that’s pretty crazy. Glad the tip helped!
nxt241
Oct 17, 2007 at 2:40 am
it didnt work for me
i put 1800 in decimal
jazzbo
Jan 22, 2008 at 4:56 pm
My system is not making system restore points automatically every day like it should. It does make them when I do it manually and automatically when I have a microsoft update. I checked the values in regedit. They are the same as your example except
Last Index shows 0×0000004d (77) could that be my problem?? Automatic system restore points are turned on for my c drive.
thanks
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