All system restore points constantly deleted with VSS services/volsnap errors

For anyone following this, the answer was a complete re-installation of Windows and not using Utilities, such as registry cleaners. Everything working as far as System Restore is concerned.

Beware of the Recovery option, which is supposed to be very drastic, but doesn't seem to do a re-install, as you would expect it would seeing it says it deletes everything - it clearly doesn't, so I'm not quite sure what the point of it is.

Re-installation is incredibly slow - you will probably think it has got stuck or frozen the computer, as it just sits for what seems (and may be) hours without the display changing. But leave it and you eventually got there.

Tier 2 technician at Microsoft seems to be the bare minimum to aim for to get someone who seems to be about your own level of understanding and, for some unknown reason, they like to contact you at 7 am!

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Hi,

Well I am glad Microsoft is helping however I still think it is hardware and they probably will

not be able to pinpoint that.

Since they are also befuddled that even more points to hardware since if this were a known

issue they would have seen it before (as I would have).

Rob - SpiritX

Hi Rob,

I've spent 8 h on the Internet to Microsoft today - so far fruitless, as they kept losing the connection and I had to start again with someone new, then one got a bee in his bonnet about a virus and we spent ages doing a full virus scan - they are escalating it tomorrow to a "research engineer", Costing a lot, but, if it works....I'll get back to here if it does get sorted, but I've already lost 2 months of work.

Thanks for the help

Sorry Tom those most people are ones that have done something with either software or

hardware that causes their restore points to have issues just as yours are.

Again, if it were Windows millions and millions would have the issue... and I have never seen the

issue you are having and if it were Windows I guarantee you I would have seen it.

The Restore Points can be placed on any partition and are not automatically on C:.

If you have an SSD check with its maker as the issue would be that drive and its firmware not

playing properly with Windows - not the other way around. It is not Windows responsibility to

be compatible with the millions of hardware devices and drivers out there. It is those devices

and drivers' responsibility to be compatible with Windows.

This is not Windows. And if it were I would tell you as I am only a volunteer and neither speak for

nor represent Microsoft. Especially if there were known issues I would have told you rather than

been involved in this lengthy and so far fruitless effort to try to resolve your issues.

Stop thinking it is anything to do with Windows as that will just prevent you from finding out

what the real problem is.

Rob - SpiritX

There are no partitions on my C drive apart from the one for the System Reserved partition - what "other hidden partitions" do you mean? Aren't the restore pouts in each of the System Volume Information folders on each drive? If not, where ARE they?

For the re-install, it never gave me an option of formatting or not formatting. I find it absolutely cretinous that a process billed as wiping the hard drive does not FORMAT the drive before re-installing Windows! If I had known that, I WOULD have done it myself  and avoided wasting yet another week. No other company in the world would get away with selling you something and providing absolutely no information or support. And then pass the buck to the computer manufacturer. The whole thing is full of bugs

• EVERY link you click on in Windows about an error message to "get more information" (and others) takes you to a page that says "this page is no longer available"! - if they haven't bothered to get rid of these useless links, what else have they not done?!!

I don't have the  unswerving belief in Microsoft you have, Rob, - the problem. as far as I'm concerned. could be:

! Windows itself - many many people report this loss of system restore points, usually with no resolution

2. a conflict between Windows and something else other than the hard drive (hardware or software)

3 the hard drive

4 Windows and the hard drive - there are reports of Windows not liking SSD, but with no details.