System Restore Service Disabled – Fix It in 3 Steps

What's Actually Happening

You try to run System Restore—maybe after installing a driver that broke your graphics or a Windows update that trashed your audio—and you get error 0x80042308, or a message saying "System Restore is not running" or "The service is disabled." System Restore depends on the Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) service. If VSS is stopped or disabled, System Restore can't create or apply restore points. The reason this happens is often a byproduct of a third-party drive cleaner, a registry tweaker, or an overzealous "performance optimizer" that disables VSS to "save resources." The irony is that saving those few kilobytes of RAM breaks one of the most useful recovery tools you have.

Below is the fix flow. Start with step 1. If that doesn't work, move to step 2. Step 3 is for the rare cases where the service got killed by malware or a deeply screwed-up registry. You can stop as soon as System Restore works again.

Step 1: 30 Seconds – Check the Service State

This is the fix that works for 80% of people. Open the Services panel: press Win+R, type services.msc, hit Enter. Look for Volume Shadow Copy. If its status isn't "Running" and its startup type isn't "Automatic (Delayed Start)", you've found the problem.
Right-click it, choose Start. Then right-click again, choose Properties, set the startup type to Automatic (Delayed Start). Click Apply, then OK. Now try System Restore again.

Why delayed start? Because VSS needs the storage driver stack to be fully loaded. Immediate auto-start can race against other services and fail silently. Delayed start avoids that race condition without you having to manually start it.

If the service starts and stays running, you're done. If it fails to start, move to step 2.

Step 2: 5 Minutes – Re-Register VSS Components

Sometimes the service's DLLs get de-registered. You can re-register them in one batch command. Open an elevated Command Prompt (right-click Start, choose Terminal (Admin) or Command Prompt (Admin)). Run these four commands in order:

cd /d %windir%\system32
net stop vss
net stop swprv
for %i in (*.dll) do regsvr32 /s %i

Wait for it to finish—it might take 20 seconds. Then restart the VSS service manually from the Services panel (as in step 1). Try System Restore again.

If that still fails, move to step 3.

Step 3: 15+ Minutes – Reset via Registry Fix

This is the nuclear option. Only do this if the first two steps didn't work. The service's registry key might have been deleted or set to a wrong value. You'll need Registry Editor and maybe a system restore point to roll back if you mess up—so create one before proceeding. Wait, you can't create a restore point because the service is broken. Right. So be careful.

Open Registry Editor: Win+R, type regedit, hit Enter. Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS

Check that the Start value is 2 (for Automatic Delayed Start). If it's 4 (Disabled) or missing, set it to 2. Also check the ImagePath value—it should be:

C:\Windows\system32\vssvc.exe

If the path is wrong or the key is missing entirely, you can rebuild it manually. Export a known-good VSS key from another working Windows machine (same version) and import it here. Or use the DISM command to restore system files, which will also fix the service:

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

After DISM finishes, restart your PC. Then go back to step 1 and verify the service starts.

Still Broken?

If you've done all three steps and VSS still won't start, the issue is likely deeper: a corrupted driver stack, a missing Windows file, or a failing disk. Run sfc /scannow from an admin Command Prompt. Then try step 2 again. If that still fails, you might need to reset Windows 11 or 10 (the "Keep my files" option) to restore the servicing stack. It's rare, but some third-party cleaners corrupt the volume shadow copy filter driver—and that's not something you can fix from the registry alone.