I want to totally reset my File History. Before installing Windows 10, I shut off File History. After upgrading from Win 8.1, I decided I wanted to remove a lot of folders which I don't really need to backup up constantly as they rarely change, they are taking up a lot of space, and I do image backups at least monthly. I originally had everything assigned under libraries. I removed them as libraries. Unfortunately I may have made a bad choice and tried to manually remove the history files.
After restarting File History (I did this twice) and using File Explorer to review what is in the File History directory, I now have two major folders: "my computer name" and "my computer name(2)". Looking at these folders, the first folder is missing a lot of data subfolders and has no "Configuration" and $OF subfolders.
my computer name
Data
Drv1 (OS)
Drv2 (Data)
my computer name (2)
Configuration
Data
$OF
Drv1 (OS)
Drv2 (Data)
The second one seems to have everything I wanted to set up. However when I open the File History Restore option to see what I have, only one subfolder in Drv2 appears in the list and I see no way to access the other folders.
It appears that I have totally horked File History. Is there some way to completely reset File History so I can start from scratch?
JohnD
Hello John,
If you like, you can use an option in the tutorial below to reset File History in Windows 10.
File History - Reset to Default in Windows 10
Thanks Brink,
That fixed it. I had fun removing all the system/hidden files that were created in the existing File History folders. It even contained MS Office temporary backup (~.....) files. Apparently it backed these up if I had an Office file open when the backup executed. I eventually was able to remove all the folders in File History and File History itself. I was using an additional physical internal drive to store the File History files and other backups and I had heard that Windows 10 would not allow internal drives for File History. However, when I started File History again, it allowed me to select this drive. I added the additional folders I wanted to backup and now I am good to go.
Thanks again,
JohnD
Great news John. I'm glad it could help.
As a further follow up to this post, is was having difficulty running File History using the new "Settings > Update & Security > Backup" method. It would crash on me although it seemed to do the backup. If I used the old "Control Panel > Final History" method, it worked fine. I posted to the MS Community and a suggestion from one of their engineers to:
1. Shut off the File History service.
2. Rename the FileHistory Configuration folder in the UserAppData...... folder.
3. Restart the service and check that File History settings are now reset.
4. Stop the service again.
5. Rename the FileHistory Configuration folder back to the original name.
6. Restart the service again and everything should now work.
This did correct the problem I was having with the newer method of accessing running File History. Possibly before playing with the configuration folders we need to shut off the File History first?
JohnD
I'm not sure why the Settings method wouldn't work for you while the Control Panel method did.
Does resetting File History using the tutorial I posted earlier help with this any?
Yes the tutorial got me reset to the point where I could remove all my previous history and start over. But the new Settings access to run a File History backup did not work, however the old Control Panel did. It doesn't make sense what the difference would be between the two but I guess there is.
JohnD
Are you having issues with anything else in Settings?
No other issues at this point. My only suggestion is maybe the tutorial should mention to stop the File History service first before messing with the File History folder and then restart it after you are done in case Windows is in the middle of doing something with it. You would think that the Settings version just executes the old Control Panel process, but who knows what else MS plugged in there.
JohnD
Usually, you would just get an in use error if it was in the middle of a backup when trying to reset File History.