Delete all system restore points

In Windows XP creates a system restore point every 24 hours and whenever you make changes to the system. The problem I was having is that when my available disk space was shrinking the system restore points were getting more and more defragmented. This normally wouldn’t be a problem but for some reason the disk defrag says these restore points are unmovable files. Well I looked for a solution and the most obvious one is to use the disk cleanup wizard to delete the restore points. The only problem I had with this is that the wizard doesn’t delete the latest restore point. This creates a fragmented restore point that fragments the newest restore point. Basically I will always have an unmovable restore point unless I can find a way to delete every single one of them.

I found a way. In the Windows XP Control Panel go to the System Restore tab and check “Turn off System Restore on all drives” and then click OK. This will delete all the system restore points. After you have turned off system restore run the defrag utility and then enable system restore and you have a cleaned up drive.

I’ve known about this for a while but I forgot how to do it and I was getting frustrated that I couldn’t remember how to do it. Hopefully writing this out will make me remember.