System Restore Explorer is a tool which allows you to browse system restore points on your computer and select individual ones for deletion should you wish to free up some disk space. It also allows you to mount the contents of a restore point into a folder so that you can browse and copy individual files, without the need to perform a full system restore.
When you select a restore point and mountit the tool will create a shortcut to that particular restore point which will allow you to browse the contents and copy files. 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 will not delete the restore point).
I have tested this tool on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 beta, unfortunately the SRRemoveRestorePoint function didn’t appear to function as described on Windows XP, so I have had to restrict the use of this tool to Windows Vista and newer (and there is a check in the install and the app 
)
System Restore Explorer uses AlphaVSS, which is a .net library which allows access to the Volume Shadow Copy Service. The Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) is a set of COM interfaces, delivered with various versions of Microsoft Windows, that implements a framework to allow volume backups to be performed while applications on a system continue to write to the volumes. Hence how system restore points are created!
If you’d like to give System Restore Explorer a try then you can download it here, please feel free to leave feedback via the comments section.
History
- 0.0.1-Internal release
- 0.0.2-Alpha release, initially just a blog posting (and only allowed restore points to be deleted, not browsed)
- 0.0.3-Alpha release, this was the first version to allow a restore point to be mounted and the contents to be browsed. Zip file only, no install and only worked on x86 systems.
- 0.0.4-Beta release, now with installer, and AlphaVSS support for both x86 and x64 versions of Windows.
- 0.0.5-Beta release, updated AlphaVSS components, made changes to auto-update system, there is now a menu option to disable the server check (Some people appear to be paranoid about apps that make an outgoing connection!)
I made a previous version file restorer that works like the Microsoft version that works only in the Vista Business and all version of 7 and 8. It works on the level of individual files, not the whole System Restore snapshot. If you are looking for an individual files previous version, it may be easier to use: http://sourceforge.net/projects/vistaprevrsrcvr/
Used this utility to recover file(s) that were not in Recycle Bin or avaialbe in Windows 7 File or Partiton Recovery. Worked exactly as described perfectly.
What an excellent article! I was referred to it as the solution to my problem of having deleted a windows.old folder after an upgrade to a windows 7 machine which turned out to have some critical data on it. This was a godsend, thank you so much.
I have my harddisk split into 3 partitions: C (System), D (Docs) and E (Backup). To (when rightclicking on a folder or file) use the “Previous Version” option I turned on System Restore for all these 3 partitions.
The available stations as viewed in the System Properties Window are in this order: D then E and then C.
Now, when using your System Restore Explorer I only can explore the Restore Point of the D partition so not C. I think this is because the D partition is on top of the list. When I turned of System Restore for D and E, then System Restore Explorer views the C Restore Point. But I don’t want to disable System Restore for D and E.
My question: is there a way to change the Available Stations-order so to view the C System Restore Point and leave SR for D and E enabled?
Thank you.
Hi, thanks for your message, unfortunately I have not seen this problem and I am not currently doing any active development on this project. There is no way to change the order of the partitions that are displayed in SRE. Sorry.
This tool is magic ! i first tried to restaure various system points via windows 7 as i accidentally deleted huge amount of precious datas which i thought were definitely lost. I was so desperated that i had to try something else. I googled ‘recover files folders datas windows 7′ by chance and i found this article. After installation, SRE showed me various system points (some of which were differents from w7). I tried one of them and all my datas were there and i was able to retrieve them. I couldn’t believe it ! thank you so much for this article and this great tool, you cannot imagine how much i’m relieved !