How to install/Enable System restore on Win server 2003

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System Restore’s purpose is to return your system to a workable state without requiring a complete reinstallation and without compromising your data files. The utility runs in the background and automatically creates a restore point when a trigger event occurs. Trigger events include application installations, AutoUpdate installations, Microsoft Backup Utility recoveries, unsigned- driver installations, and manual creations of restore points. The utility also creates restore points once a day by default.Currently system restore available in Windows XP/Vista this tutorial will show you how to install/enable system restore on win server 2003.

Solution 1

Note:- Take a complete backup of your registry before doing any changes

In this procedure you need to download Add System Restore from here

Extract the zip file into a folder, in this you will see two files – AddSystemRestoreEntries.reg and sr.inf

Double click on AddSystemRestoreEntries.reg and click on Yes when prompted.

Insert your Windows XP CD and Right click on sr.inf and select Install.

Point to the /i386 directory on the CD if prompted.

Reboot your win server 2003 that’s it now you are ready for your new win server 2003 feature

System restore screen

System restore tab

Solution 2

start we need a WinXP installation CD (doesn’t matter is Home Edition or Professional). In XP system restore is installed in syssetup.inf under the inf.always section. If you have XP installed, you can open up %windir%\inf\syssetup.inf and search for “[Infs.Always]“: you’ll see the section XP looks at for installing system components. You’ll notice it has sr.inf, this is the inf for system restore. For Windows 2003, if you look at syssetup.inf you won’t find sr.inf. This doesn’t mean system restore won’t work in server 2003.

Copy sr.inf file from your xp machine in to your win server 2003.Now we have to right click on sr.inf and select “Install”, to install it on Windows 2003. If you have XP installed on another machine/partition you can simply right click on it; if you don’t, extract \i386\sr.in_ from the XP CD to a folder of your choice, then right clink on it and select “Install”. It will ask you where the files are, so point to the XP CD. When done you’ll be prompted to restart the system.

After restarting the system you’ll get an error saying that the service could not start, specifically this is error 1068: this means it cannot run under the service is on. If you look at it in services.msc console, the path of the executable will be “C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe -k netsvcs”. This got me thinking so I opened up sr.inf, and found this line:
[SRSvc_delreg]
HKLM,”Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SvcHost”,”SRGroup”

So it seems the sr.inf doesn’t register system restore to run under the network services group. Using the above registry key as an example, I opened regedit and went to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SvcHost. On the right side I saw netsvcs. I double clicked on it, but could not find SRService (this is the name for system restore).

at the bottom I added SRService, rebooted, and this time got no error on startup. I opened up rstrui.exe, and System Restore opened fine. I also had a System Restore tab in System Properties now, too. I was able to make a restore point fine, then restore the computer to it without any problems. So in the above registry key double click on netsvcs, and at the bottom of the list type in SRService (not sure if this is case sensitive or not).

I would personally prefer solution 1 because this is very easy and simple .