System Restore

What Does System Restore Mean?

System restore refers to a recovery tool that allows users to back up a system to a certain previous point in time. The term "system restore" is commonly recognized as a Microsoft Windows feature in operating systems, beginning with Windows ME in 2000.

Techopedia Explains System Restore

In system restore, the computer regresses various items including files, applications, registries and settings, in order to help users deal with different kinds of operating system problems. Users create a restore point that resides in a particular setting in order to try to navigate various types of system corruption or other problems that can be solved by essentially "moving backward in time" relative to the computer system.

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Margaret Rouse

Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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