Corrupt Restore points in Vista

Browntoa

been looking at a PC for the last few hours as was failing windows updates, seems the reason is it locks while trying to set a new restore point.

Attempting to access System restore to go back to an earlier date locks it up , even in safe mode.

Trying to go into Computer properties and turn off sytem restore locks up the PC , seems to be at the point it looks for drives on the PC

Used Vista recovery CD to boot the PC and enter restore that way , again it locks up although other functions work on the recovery CD

done some googling but found no answers to this specific problem

its clean on a combofix and Malwarebytes scan so can safely eliminate any infection

anyone seen this before I factory default it ??

closed

Corrupt disk, system restore service running?

Browntoa

system restore running , seems the disk is ok

closed

delete the directory perhaps?

stop the service, then
cacls "c:\System Volume Information" /E /G administrator:F
del "c:\System Volume Information" /AH/Q

or reinstall system restore.

davb

Google shows some other people having a similar problem, but unfortunately they arrived at the same conclusion as you - reinstall Windows:
http://www.vistax64.com/vista-performance-maintenance/189946-installers-freeze-when-creating-system-restore-point.html

The only other thing I can suggest is to try turning of UAC for a while - it does tend to cure a lot of issues.