When you install programs that make major changes to your Windows Vista system or when you make any tweaks that might make your Windows Vista computer unstable, it is a good idea to create a restore point so that you can restore from that point when things go absolutely the wrong way with your tweaks.

Restore Points are kind of like snapshots of your operating system at a given moment that you can go back to that moment when the system becomes unstable. If “System Protection” is turned on, Vista automatically creates restore points once a day.

Follow these steps to create a restore point on a Windows Vista computer,

Step-1:

Click “Start >> Control Panel” and then click on “System and Maintenance” link and then click on “Backup and Restore Center”.

Step-2:

Click on the “Create a restore point or change settings” link on the left side under “Tasks”.

Step-3:

Acknowledge the UAC prompt and Windows will popup “System Properties” dialog with “System Protection” tab focused. If for some reason the “System Protection” tab is not focused then click on the “System Protection” tab. Check the disks that you want the restore points to be created on and click on the “Create…” button.

Step-4:

Windows will ask you to name the restore point so that you can identify it later when needed. Give it a decent name. You don’t have to type-in the date and time as the date and time are added automatically to the name. Hit the “Create” button once you type-in a name.

Windows will create a restore point at the selected disk(s) and will acknowledge with a message, like below, once done.

Step-5:

Click on the OK button to dismiss all dialogs.

You’ve successfully created a restore point of your computer. Now if things go wrong you can restore your computer from any of the restore points that you’ve created. Again, keep in mind, restore points are stored on your hard disk and if your hard disk gets corrupted then there is no way to restore your computer. So, always try to backup your important files periodically.

If you have any questions regarding this please make sure to ask us in comments.