The Restore Point is a brilliant idea, introduced in some ancient version of Windows. In Windows 7, however, Microsoft sought to obfuscate your ability to set a manual Restore Point. So successful were they, that setting a Restore Point and rebooting doesn’t work.

I wasn’t aware of this problem specifically. I was aware, however, that something changed between Windows Vista and Windows 7 where System Restore was no longer the easiest thing to access. As with many things in new versions of Windows, Microsoft relocated the System Restore command.

Thank you not.

The theory — and I’m guessing — is probably that it’s not often necessary for a user to set a restore point. The operating system does that in Windows 7 as part of the File History feature. Of course, that works best when you have a Windows Backup configured. And then things get messy.

The bottom line is that if you find System Restore, and you set a manual restore point, then you reboot, the restore point is lost. Gone. Forgotten. Never existed.

I can’t tell you specifically why Windows 7 obliterates a fresh restore point. And it makes little sense, too: Obviously after deliberately setting the restore point you change something on your PC. That often necessitates a reboot. Having the restore point lost in a disk-writing cache or otherwise destroyed out of ruthless vengeance simply means that no one in the Windows programming group at Microsoft ever attempted that feat. Or if they did, they utterly failed to verify it.

Apparently a solution isn’t available for this problem. I was alerted to it by a reader, someone who picked up my Troubleshooting & Maintaining Your PC All-In-One Desktop Reference For Dummies, which is a very long title to type. I can’t think of a solution, other than somehow waiting a day after setting the restore point and then rebooting at that time. That doesn’t fix the problem, but it may allow the restore point to be fixed (as in permanent).

If I get any updates on this situation, I’ll be sure to post a follow-up.