Windows 11's replacement for System Restore keeps only 72 hours of restore points

Microsoft's replacement for System Restore reaches everyone with today's Patch Tuesday, and the most important thing to know about it is how quickly it forgets. Point-in-time restore keeps restore points for 72 hours. After that they are deleted, whether or not you ever needed them.

The feature shipped first in KB5095093, the optional preview update Microsoft pushed on June 23 for Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2, and it is one of the headline changes in the July 14, 2026 security update. It is on by default on Home and Pro machines that are not under enterprise management, provided the OS volume is at least 200GB.

What it actually does

Point-in-time restore takes a snapshot of the whole system on a schedule and lets you roll the machine back to that snapshot. Microsoft's documentation is specific about what "whole system" means: the OS, installed apps, settings, and local user files. Nothing is scoped out. The snapshots are captured with the Volume Shadow Copy Service, the same VSS plumbing that has been in Windows for two decades and that System Restore already uses.

The defaults for a consumer machine:

Home and Pro users get two knobs: on/off, and the storage cap. Frequency and retention are Enterprise-only settings, managed through the PointInTimeRestore node of the Recovery CSP. So on a normal laptop, you get a daily snapshot, three days of history, and no say in either number.

Restore points also get evicted early. Microsoft lists five conditions that delete them, including free disk space dropping to 20GB or below, and any VSS failure serious enough that it cannot preserve prior data. In that last case, every restore point on the machine is removed.

Where it differs from System Restore

System Restore is not gone, and the two share the VSS storage pool, which Microsoft warns can put them in competition for the same disk budget. The differences are worth spelling out, because the tradeoff is not obviously in the new feature's favor.

System Restore keeps its restore points indefinitely, subject to disk space, and creates them on events like a driver install or when you ask it to. Point-in-time restore is automatic only. There is no button that says "snapshot this machine before I do something stupid." It runs on its schedule or not at all, and anything older than three days is gone.

What you get in exchange is coverage. System Restore's handling of apps and user data has always been partial and hard to predict. Point-in-time restore takes the full system state, which means a rollback actually returns you to the machine you had on Tuesday morning.

That is also the risk, and Microsoft says so plainly in its own warning box: restoring reverts user files, applications, settings, passwords, certificates, and keys. Anything you did after the restore point is lost. Files in OneDrive are not affected, because they are not on the disk being reverted.

You cannot run it from Windows

The restore itself only starts from the Windows Recovery Environment, either by booting into it deliberately from Settings, or by failing to boot enough times that Windows drops you there. You pick Troubleshoot, then Point-in-time restore, then hand over your BitLocker recovery key if the volume is encrypted.

The BitLocker key requirement is the part that will generate support tickets. A recovery feature aimed at people who cannot troubleshoot is gated behind a 48-digit number most of them have never looked at.

There are other limits. A restore point taken on Home cannot be used after upgrading to Pro. EFS-encrypted files block restoration entirely. On a multi-volume machine, only the OS volume comes back. Restore points cannot be exported or mounted as images.

The other change worth noticing

The same update adds a calendar to Windows Update settings that lets you pause updates by picking an end date, up to 35 days out. When it expires, you can pick another one, as many times as you want.

Microsoft is not going to give anyone a switch labeled "never update this computer," and this is not that switch. But re-pausing in 35-day increments, forever, is close enough that it is worth calling what it is: Microsoft conceding a fight it has been having with users since Windows 10 shipped, without admitting it lost.

Should you leave it on

If your drive is 200GB or larger and you are not managed by an IT department, it is already on. Leaving it there costs you up to 50GB of disk in the worst case, and the reserved-storage mechanism means some of that space was already spoken for.

Be clear about what this is. Three days of automatic snapshots is an undo button for a bad Tuesday update or a driver that eats your display. It is not a backup. It will not help you next month, and it will not survive the disk it lives on.