Solved How do I stop Windows Modules Installer restore points occurring daily?

I have a task set up correctly in Task Scheduler to create one restore point daily at 9 AM. I check my restore points frequently in CCleaner to make sure that task is working. My restore points are labelled Daily Restore Point. I get exactly one a day. But I also get at least one and sometimes two or three restore points labelled Windows Modules Installer, and I've read all of the threads on W10Forums dealing with this topic and found nothing to help me explain and stop the creation of WMI restore points alongside my Daily Restore Point entries.

I have zero failed installs in my update history.

I don't want two, three, or four RPs created every day. I know about the legendary unreliability of restoring the registry from RPs, but I have used it many times over the years, and enjoyed satisfactory results (so long as I remembered to disable my AV before I ran it), and I have my absolutely regular and reliable Macrium Reflect images always, so this query is not about any of those concerns. It's about finding out why I have these redundant, unnecessary WMI restore points every day, and how I can make the system stop creating them.

Ideas will be rewarded with thanks, not to mention the satisfaction you'll get from posting a genuinely useful response.

[W11Pro 258 on a PC with 7th generation CPU, but otherwise fully compliant.]

Dan

Uh, my guess is that Windows Modules are being updated (probably things like Security / definitions being installed) and a RP is created when that happens. I cannot think of any other sort of Windows Modules that get updated multiple times a day.

Also, I've had my system installed since around the 8th (when I cleanly installed) and I only see a few RPs from the 15th (when I did a massive overhaul of the drivers installed, and manually created several extra RPs) as well as *EXACTLY 1* Windows Modules Installer from today. None before that at all.

I'll keep looking to see if they start multiplying like rabbits, but I suspect that this may be something that is short term only-, because the OS was literally released less than 2 weeks ago - so device manufacturers were probably rushing to get new drivers and features pushed out, so you may have a lot of them right now, but over time they will slowly ease up.

Still, though, worth looking into if you continue to have multiple ones daily - because as I said, I see only one (and I'm only looking in the SR app, I don't use CCleaner ever on my machines).

John, you're a great help! Your message drove me to look again at Windows Update history, where I had looked before on that machine (the one in question, not the one I'm typing on), but I had only looked for "failed updates." This time around, I looked at all updates, and found a slew of Defender database updates, some of them coming two/three times a day, without my getting any notification. The solution occurred to me: before I updated to 11 on that non-compliant machine (this compliant one was clean-installed on a brand new SSD - yay!), I had always kept WU paused until I heard the news (usually from Ask Woody's Patch Lady, Susan Bradley) about the latest PT updates and what they had effed up and whether the damage affected me. While my updates were paused, I got a desktop notification every time there was a Defender database update: "You need some updates. Click here to install." Now, on 11, I've been eager to get any updates available, especially on the non-compliant, and that means that MS is freely updating Defender every day, without telling me, except by way of entries in my WU history.

The dates of the Intelligence updates and the dates of my Windows Modules Installer RPs match.

Now my only question is, "Why aren't YOU getting a slew of WMI RPs associated with every Defender Intelligence update?"

I've paused WU on that PC, and now I'll know when and where to look for the reason for a new WMI RP.

(I didn't type all this for your benefit, but for the benefit of anyone else who comes hunting here for an explanation for WMI entries in the RP list.) :)

Thanks again!

Dan

Quite probably because it is still, for all intents and purposes, a new system, that I had not configured fully.

I installed cleanly on the 8th, spent some time on the 10th setting up things I needed for work the next week, and then used the machine without a lot of 3rd party drivers and such. I spent this past Friday finally setting up the missing drivers for my not often used hardware, and finally added more software and such both Friday and today.

However, in your case, I wonder - first of all, did you cleanly install W11 or upgrade from W10? If upgrade, is it the same system you used to pause updates on?

Because I'm wondering - did you by chance install some software / enable a registry setting to force create an RP every time WU installs updates?

Reason I ask is that, in looking at my system, I have:



So, obviously I've been getting the same type of updates. But I only show the one RP. And that is dated yesterday, from when my system was turned on after being off most of Saturday.

Which leads me to another question - do you turn off your system daily? Because, as a rule, I keep mine on - Saturday was a special case, I need to do a bit of hardware maintenance after buying a new webcam Friday. Otherwise, it stays on 24 / 7, which might *also* be a factor in the different RP creation schema.

Finally - let me research, but IIRC, if you manually create RPs, they may persist rather than getting automatically removed, over time, whereas automatically created ones are dropped off after your storage limit is reached, with the oldest ones being removed, IIRC.

Lol - we've got our home work set for us, don't we?

johnlgalt said:

Quite probably because it is still, for all intents and purposes, a new system, that I had not configured fully.

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Mine, too.

johnlgalt said:

However, in your case, I wonder - first of all, did you cleanly install W11 or upgrade from W10? If upgrade, is it the same system you used to pause updates on?

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As I said in the OP, John, :) the non-compliant (CPU only) is an upgrade. Yes, I always pause updates on all of my machines (unless they are critical security updates) until I hear from the community about the quality of the latest updates.

johnlgalt said:

Because I'm wondering - did you by chance install some software / enable a registry setting to force create an RP every time WU installs updates?

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Nope, I enabled more frequent RPs with Brink's tut so that I could set an automatic RP task. Forces nothing.

johnlgalt said:

Which leads me to another question - do you turn off your system daily?

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Yep. Always have. (There are two schools of thought about that: your computer will only boot so many times before it fails to boot, and your computer will only run continuously for so many hours before it stops running.)

johnlgalt said:

Finally - let me research, but IIRC, if you manually create RPs, they may persist rather than getting automatically removed, over time, whereas automatically created ones are dropped off after your storage limit is reached, with the oldest ones being removed, IIRC.

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Thank you.

johnlgalt said:

Lol - we've got our home work set for us, don't we?

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Indeed.

[I hope you don't mind my editing your post. It really annoys me when people unnecessarily reproduce the entirety of posts, including sidelines and already seen graphics. Just me.]

I suspect the reason I don't have as many RPs then is that my system is always on - only Saturday was it off, and then on Sunday, right when I turned it on, it updated definitions, and made a RP (my newest one).

Since then - none. Since then, the machine has been off - not at all.

Extremely bizarre behavior, but the evidence suggests that this may very well be the case.

Gracias, senor. You have been a great help. Good teachers get their students to think. Your stuff made me think today. All's well, and the RPs seem to be entirely predictable now, and entirely manageable.

Thank you for the kind words. they really mean a lot to me. But don't shortchage yourself - you took the initiative ot think about the issue. You deserve just as much credit as my 5 minutes of posting with a suggestion

I have never used System Restore since way back in the 90's. With Macrium Reflect SR is not really needed .

To each their own. I don't want to make a new MR reflect backup every time I change a setting / update a driver / install a program. All of these activities happen at least once a day for me, and I'd be making MR backups every day during my workflow, which, quite frankly, is not possible. So System Restore serves its purpose well enough.

johnlgalt said:

To each their own. I don't want to make a new MR reflect backup every time I change a setting / update a driver / install a program. All of these activities happen at least once a day for me, and I'd be making MR backups every day during my workflow, which, quite frankly, is not possible. So System Restore serves its purpose well enough.

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I do one every day, it takes less that two minutes., but you are right to each their own.

Josey Wales said:

I do one every day, it takes less that two minutes., but you are right to each their own.

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Which reminds me: My System disk (disk 0) backups have gone from almost 3 mins to (latest) 1:44. Now, my 11 installation is somewhat smaller than my 10 was, but this seems to me to be a remarkable benefit of MR8 running on W11.

(And yes, I mount one occasionally to make sure I've actually got what I think I've got.)
(And yes, I restored from one yesterday, because I thought I'd done something I definitely didn't want to do. Turned out I hadn't, so I restored the Image I'd made just before the first restore. Perfect.)

MR will restore everything, SR's History was that it failed miserably, but this may have been fixed. MR can also do incremental backups. Bottom line for me is That I can trust Macrium Reflect, I cannot say the same about products that MS puts out. MS makes way to many changes behind the scenes. YMMY! :)

But I would have to perform 2, 3 or even 4 MR backups (or more) per day when I go changing things, testing things, installing software, uninstalling software.... All that is a part of one of my jobs, and sometimes even comes in for the other job (though I do most of that for that job in VMs).

Like I said - SR serves its purpose. I can make an SR on the fly while still continuing to work on what I'm working on - including installing / uninstalling drivers (except You, RealTek ). And my backups don't take low times like that because I have a lot more to backup. And I split my ]Users folder out to a separate drive.

If I could make backups without interrupting my workflow, even if for 5 minutes, I would - trust me, I value the MRs over the SRs for actual backup and restore. But backing up multiple hundred GBs of files isn't fast, even with my NVMs.

johnlgalt said:

But I would have to perform 2, 3 or even 4 MR backups (or more) per day when I go changing things, testing things, installing software, uninstalling software.... All that is a part of one of my jobs, and sometimes even comes in for the other job (though I do most of that for that job in VMs).

Like I said - SR serves its purpose. I can make an SR on the fly while still continuing to work on what I'm working on - including installing / uninstalling drivers (except You, RealTek ). And my backups don't take low times like that because I have a lot more to backup. And I split my ]Users folder out to a separate drive.

If I could make backups without interrupting my workflow, even if for 5 minutes, I would - trust me, I value the MRs over the SRs for actual backup and restore. But backing up multiple hundred GBs of files isn't fast, even with my NVMs.

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I do not do all of that so I can understand your point. I am on The Insider Program from time to time, and if I am on The Dev Channel, I do not do an Image daily.

Yeah, heck, when I was on Insiders back with the old rig on Win10, I wasn't backing up daily lol. But back then I never had any real mission critical data that I could need at any given moment.

I really need to build up a NAS, but my current phone's screen is all but dead (70% no display, 30% green display) so a new phone was a priority. NAS comes next as I build up my office and networking closet downstairs.

Then I won't have to worry about mission critical data on my PC anymore.

johnlgalt said:

Then I won't have to worry about mission critical data on my PC anymore.

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Oh, happy day!

johnlgalt said:

But I would have to perform 2, 3 or even 4 MR backups (or more) per day when I go changing things, testing things, installing software, uninstalling software.... All that is a part of one of my jobs, and sometimes even comes in for the other job (though I do most of that for that job in VMs).

Like I said - SR serves its purpose. I can make an SR on the fly while still continuing to work on what I'm working on - including installing / uninstalling drivers (except You, RealTek ). And my backups don't take low times like that because I have a lot more to backup. And I split my ]Users folder out to a separate drive.

If I could make backups without interrupting my workflow, even if for 5 minutes, I would - trust me, I value the MRs over the SRs for actual backup and restore. But backing up multiple hundred GBs of files isn't fast, even with my NVMs.

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Reflect 8 Intra daily backups? That and Rapid delta restore. Doesn't that do the trick? I gave up on System Restore a long time ago - it was never very reliable.