I was having problems creating “Restore Points” in windows 7.
When I opened “System Protection” everything was greyed out; and all I got was an: “System Restore Error Code 0x81000203”.
Hunting high and low I finally came across this good advice from the following website: https://windowsforum.com/threads/actual-solution-for-system-restore-error-code-0x81000203.184794/
Both “Volume Shadow Copy” and “Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider” must be started and set to automatic. With both of these services active, the System Protection tab will work.
Their link to Microsoft didn’t work but here is a link that works: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/how-to-fix-error-code-0x81000203/0358b3df-a34f-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5 This describes how to fix this error for the “Volume Shadow”; but just apply the same for “Microsoft Software Shadow”.
My “Restore Points” are now working. One more suggestion: Don’t forget to click the Configuration button to select the drive, and set the Maximum Disk Space to be used (to something more than zero, depending on how many generations of restore points you want, set it to at least a few GB).
Also just in case, create the first checkpoint yourself.
That’s it, and I am a happy bunny.
