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How to Restore Specific Files from Windows System Restore Points

It is hardly necessary to recapitulate how useful and convenient Windows System Restore feature is. Whether an operating system file got corrupted, or a rogue software disabled some core Windows feature, or an unstable driver rendered the OS dead, System Restore can bring the computer back to life and running as before. Basically, restoring a computer to an earlier date undoes all changes made to the system. User files are spared but new program and updates installed will be lost. If your primary reason for restoring a computer is to recover only a specific program or file, there is a better way to do it.

System Restore Explorer is a tool which allows you to browse system restore points on your computer and mount the contents of a individual restore point into a folder so that you can browse and copy individual files, without the need to perform a full system restore.

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When you select a restore point and mount it the tool will create a shortcut to that particular restore point, and open the directory in Windows explorer. You can then browse the files like you do on any normal directory. Once you have finished with a particular restore point you can either use the tool to unmount it or simply delete the shortcut. Deleting the shortcut does not delete the restore point.

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System Restore Explorer works on Windows Vista and Windows 7.

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Comments

  1. tony bombataOctober 2, 2011 at 10:39 PM

    i've been using SRE for the past year or so. however, today i had a challenge it could't address. it seems SRE only works with the windows drive. i use an ssd, and my appdata etal is located on a second drive. (i did this using reprofiler) i was trying to restore a borked firefox profile, and my E drive (which also has system restore enabled) would not come up. i had to search and find shadow explorer, an siimlar app, with with i was able to access the drive. one difference though, shadow explorer doesn't mount the restore point, it browses through it. also, it only ids restore points by date, not desription

    ReplyDelete
  2. VinodOctober 8, 2011 at 10:21 PM

    Thanks for sharing such great info!!

    ReplyDelete

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