Help With Win XP System Restore!

[IanJ25]

I am trying to restore my computer to an earlier date, but system restore is reporting that my Hard drive needs at least 200 MB of free space in order for it to run. When I go to my computer It says I have ~14GB free, and I know this is the case, so why won't system restore run?

 

[Navid]

How many partitions are there on the hard drive?
Is it possible that the free space you are talking about is on another partitioin, and the C drive, where XP is, is almost full?

 

[IanJ25]

That would make sense but how do I check to see what partition XP is on and how much free space is on it. When I said I had around 14 GB free I was talking about the amount that windows says is free when I click on my HD (C: ).

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: IanJ25
That would make sense but how do I check to see what partition XP is on and how much free space is on it. When I said I had around 14 GB free I was talking about the amount that windows says is free when I click on my HD (C: ).

Right click "My Computer" and click on "Manage". In the left pane, click on "Disk Management".
In the right pane, how many partitions do you see? How big is each?

 

[IanJ25]

I see just one and it has 14.8 GB free. Unless you want to count my D: Drive which is Compaq's backup drive or whatever (it also is on my hard drive) it has 708 MB free, but System Restore isn't enabled on it.

 

[Navid]

OK, I am at a loss!

Can you do a (safe) experiment?
If you have an image or movie or whatever file that is relatively large, copy it and rename it and store it on C. My objective is to see if there is really free space on C, or if there is not and somwhow the windows explorer does not report it correctly.

So, copy a large file to C. Then, copy it again and rename it. Then, copy it again and rename it. This way, you can occupy space using a single file by renaming it. For example if you have 500MB file, you should be able to fit 28 of them on C before it fills up. So, you should easily be able to fit 2 or 3.
Can you give that a try?

 

[IanJ25]

Yea I can copy a 700MB folder twice and that shouldn't be possible if system restore is right since it is telling me that I need to have at least 200 MB free to restart it and I obviously do have that much space free. For some reason system restore just isn't reading the amount of free space correctly or it is shut down for another reason and isn't telling me why. Thanks for your help, btw. I don't know what more I can try.

 

[Navid]

What do you mean "or it is shut down for another reason"? Is system restore shut down?

I thought it was active and you just could not restore!

Are you saying that sytem restore is disabled?

 

[IanJ25]

No, System Restore's status is reported as "suspended" on drive C: when I go to the settings page for it. I meant maybe it is "suspended" for another reason other than the fact that it thinks I have less than 200 MB of free space on my Hard Drive, but it just isn't telling me that reason.

 

[Navid]

OK, I had misunderstood you.

Please see if this helps.

 

[IanJ25]

i'm afraid that doesn't really help because neither of those causes are true for me... Guess I'll have to call tech support