Windows 8 Bible

Using System Protection

System Protection enables you to create a restore point, which is a way to back up important Windows system files. Unlike File History, System Protection doesn’t require or use any external disks. Also, it does not back up any installed programs or all of Windows 8. Rather, System Protection creates System restore points that maintain copies of the most important system files needed for Windows 8 to operate properly, as well as hidden shadow copies of some of your own personal files.

The idea behind System Protection isn’t to protect you from rare catastrophic hard drive disasters; it’s to protect you from smaller and much more common mishaps. For example, you install some program or device that wasn’t really designed for Windows 8, on the grounds that “It worked fine in Windows 7 or another version of Windows so it should work fine here,” only to discover that it doesn’t work as well as you assumed it would (because it wasn’t designed for Windows 8). Even after uninstalling the program, you find that some Windows 8 features don’t work like they did before you got the notion to give the old program or device a try.

Another common mishap occurs when you make some changes to an important file, but they’re not particularly good changes. But you save the changes anyway out of habit, thereby losing the original good copy of the file you started with. Sometimes System Protection can even help you recover a file that you deleted and removed from the Recycle Bin. ...