Recently I had to do a system restore on Windows 10, so how long does it take, what to do if gettting stuck at restoring registry?
If you encounter some serious issues with Windows, an option is to run a “System Recovery” (Restore).
The chances are that you have the feature “System restore” enabled by default in Windows.
Just type in the search bar “System restore”.
If the feature is turned “Off”, you will see something called “Create a restore point”.
If the feature is enabled, you will be able to see at least a few restore points.
Click on “show more” there.
First thing to do is to create a complete backup from your computer, including the “C:” partition and all the others that you have.
If the recovery process fails, you won’t be able to start Windows anymore and it will be a lot of trouble to get your data from the hard drive (you will need to put the hard drive into another computer and copy the files).
How long the Windows “System Restore” process takes?
It usually takes about one hour, depending how powerful your computer is.
After you click to start the recovery process, the PC will restart and display a blue window saying that the system restore process is running.
You will see some dots making a circle, being animated (this is for Windows 7 and 10).
You will see two texts on the screen, one saying “system restore is initializing” and after that, one with “system restore is recreating the registry”.
After these two screens are done, the computer will restart and you will see a black screen for about 10 minutes, maybe a bit more.
After that, the computer will do a final restart and it will work fine after.
If the System restore process is getting stuck for hours on any of these screens, do not worry, you still have the backup.
Leave it to run over night or for at least 10 hours.
It is possible that the registry is encountering errors and it will attempt to fix them, and this will take quite some time.
If even after so many hours the restore process is stuck, just restart your computer.
There is a chance that you will be able to access Windows, or after the restart there is a chance that you won’t and get an error like “Windows cannot boot from disk”.
In that case, you will have to reinstall Windows from a DVD or an USB stick drive.
If your issues are not fixed even after running the “System Restore”, be prepared to reinstall Windows.
Hopefully these tips have answered your questions regarding Windows 10 System Restore, how long does it take to run the process and what to do if you get stuck at restoring the registry.