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I have Win 8.1 with touch screen. System restore is not working but seems to be enabled. When I get to System properties, the system restore button, Configure and Create are all grayed out. Under Protection settings it shows, "Searching" for available drives but nothing ever fills in. I rebooted more than once. I've done virus scans, disabled AVG scanner and used System File Checker but nothing I've tried will get System restore working. Does anyone have any suggestions besides reinstalling windows? Any help is appreciated.

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bob
2014-07-21 11:48:43
I found out what was happening. I had an external drive attached and decided to check it. Once I unplugged it all of a sudden the System restore found the main drive and started working again. Plugged it in and it stopped working. The external drive was bad. The drive light was constantly blinking and I did not notice. Thank you for the answers. The errors in the event viewer also have cleared up as well.
Hovsep A
2014-07-22 14:15:41
thanks for your feedback, glad the problem was solved easily, the thing is that in your question you did not mention the external hard drive, Windows system restore is tricky but handy:), if you would like to close the thread as solved from your makeuseof account select the best answer.
Hovsep A
2014-07-21 10:37:18
do you have any other backup recovery solution installed perhaps they cause native System restore to not function?
Jan F
2014-07-10 23:37:47
click on Start and in the search box type "services"make sure the Volume Shadow Copy is not Disabled (Automatic, Delayed or Manual, either should be fine)click on Start and in the search box type "event viewer"in the Event Viewer click the arrow next to Custom Views and select Administrative Eventslook through the Errors and Warnings especially with the source Volume Shadow Copy and Service Control Manager