Configuring Point-in-time restore in Windows

This week is a follow-up on this post of earlier this year about getting started with point-in-time restore in Windows. At that moment, the early release of Point-in-time-restore became available and showed the concept in the Windows. Now that functionality is further developed in to a general available feature that also includes management capabilities via Microsoft Intune. Point-in-time-restore fits perfectly in the storyline of the many new (and still coming) features related to the backup, restore, and recovery of Windows. That storyline goes from Quick Machine Recovery, which is focused on recovering Windows devices when encountering critical errors that prevent the device from booting, to Windows settings backup and restore (previously known as Windows Backup for Organizations), which is focused on making it easier to switch towards new Windows devices, to Cloud rebuild, which is focused on reinstalling the operating system from the Cloud. Point-in-time restore fits in that storyline as it is focused on restoring a Windows device to the exact state of that earlier point in time. It relies on restore points that are stored locally on the device and that are captured by using Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). The main focus of Point-in-time restore is fast recovery of recent issues, as the restore points have a retention of a maximum of 72 hours. This post will start with the configuration options for Point-in-time restore, followed with the experience of a configured Point-in-time restore.

Note: Keep in mind that the Cloud rebuild feature is currently still in preview.

Configuring Point-in-time restore using custom policies

When looking at the configuration of Point-in-time restore, it all starts with the available configuration options. To provide those configuration options for Point-in-time restore, new nodes have been added to the Recovery CSP. That CSP now contains four different settings that can be used for configuring the different aspects of Point-in-time restore. All of those settings are available in the PointInTimeRestore node (./Vendor/MSFT/Recovery/PointInTimeRestore). Below is a brief overview of those settings.

Setting	Value	Description
EnablePointInTimeRestore	Boolean (True/False)	This setting can be used to enable or disable Point-in-time restore.
SetMaxDiskUsage	Integer (2048-51200)	This setting can be used to configure the maximum disk space in megabytes that can be used for all restore points.
SetRestorePointFrequency	Integer	This setting can be used to configure the frequency in minutes at which restore points are automatically created.
SetRestorePointRetention	Integer	This setting can be used to configure the retention period in minutes for a restore point.

Note: The last three settings rely on the enablement of the feature, and with that the enablement of the first setting.

The configuration of these settings is not yet available via the Settings Catalog. That means that the configuration still relies on using Custom configuration profiles. The following nine steps walk through the configuration of turning Point-in-time-restore.

1. Open the Microsoft Intune admin center navigate to Devices > Windows > Configuration
2. On the Windows | Configuration blade, click Create > New policy
3. On the Create a profile page, select Windows 10 and later > Templates > Custom and click Create
4. On the Basics page, provide a unique Name to distinguish the profile from other custom profiles and click Next
5. On the Configuration settings page, as shown below in Figure 1, click Add to add the following row and click Next

• OMA-URI setting – This setting is used to turn on Point-in-time restore
  • Name (1): Provide a name for the OMA-URI setting to distinguish it from other similar settings
  • Description: (Optional) Provide a description for the OMA-URI setting to further differentiate settings
  • OMA-URI (2): Specify ./Vendor/MSFT/Recovery/PointInTimeRestore/EnablePointInTimeRestore
  • Data type (3): Select Boolean as value
  • Value (4): Select True as value
• OMA-URI setting – This setting is used to configure the maximum disk space used for all restore points
  • Name: Provide a name for the OMA-URI setting to distinguish it from other similar settings
  • Description: (Optional) Provide a description for the OMA-URI setting to further differentiate settings
  • OMA-URI: Specify ./Vendor/MSFT/Recovery/PointInTimeRestore/SetMaxDiskUsage
  • Data type: Select Integer as value
  • Value: Specify the number of megabytes (scope: 2048-51200) as value
• OMA-URI setting – This setting is used to configure the frequency in which restore points are automatically created
  • Name: Provide a name for the OMA-URI setting to distinguish it from other similar settings
  • Description: (Optional) Provide a description for the OMA-URI setting to further differentiate settings
  • OMA-URI: Specify ./Vendor/MSFT/Recovery/PointInTimeRestore/SetRestorePointFrequency
  • Data type: Select Integer as value
  • Value: Specify the frequency in minutes (maximum of 24 hours) as value
• OMA-URI setting – This setting is used to configure the retention period for a restore point
  • Name: Provide a name for the OMA-URI setting to distinguish it from other similar settings
  • Description: (Optional) Provide a description for the OMA-URI setting to further differentiate settings
  • OMA-URI: Specify ./Vendor/MSFT/Recovery/PointInTimeRestore/SetRestorePointRetention
  • Data type: Select Integer as value
  • Value: Specify the retention period in minute (maximum of 72 hours) as value

Note: The frequency and retention can only be configured to specific values in hours via the UI. Via a configuration profile, both can be configured to any value in minutes between the minimum and maximum number of hours.

6. On the Scope tags page, configure the applicable scopes and click Next
7. On the Assignments page, configure the assignment for the required devices and click Next
8. On the Applicability rules page, configure the applicability rules, and click Next
9. On the Review + create page, verify the configuration and click Create

Note: At some point in time these settings will become available via Settings Catalog.

Experiencing Point-in-time restore configuration

When the configuration is in place, it is pretty straightforward to experience the configuration. The user experience when performing a restore is the most important experience to look at. That experience is already shown in this earlier post that was specifically focused on the introduction of Point-in-time restore. Besides that, there is also the actual configuration that is available within the Settings app. That shows the directly applied configuration by navigating to System > Restore. Below in Figure 2, is an example of Point-in-time restore, with the applied configuration. It also contains some nice numbers in minutes for the frequency and the retention. That is deliberately done to show that there is more flexibility when configuring that as an IT administrator.

More information

For more information about the point-in-time restore functionality, refer to the following docs.

• Point-in-time restore for Windows | Microsoft Learn
• vssadmin | Microsoft Learn
• System Restore – Win32 apps | Microsoft Learn
• Recovery CSP | Microsoft Learn