k0lo

Sorry; I forgot to include that in my last post. No, I do not have BitLocker enabled.

thechief:

I just fixed this about an hour ago, so your post is timely. Apparently the GUI client that displays "Previous Versions" of files communicates with your network adapter via its localhost address. In my case I was unable to communicate with the adapter, thus no shadow copies could be displayed.

The cure is to go into your network adapter's properties page and make sure that "File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks" is checked off. Once I did that the shadow copies were immediately displayed.

In my zeal to secure the machine against outside intrusions I had disabled file and printer sharing in several places (at the network adapter, in the control panel's "Network and Sharing Center" page and at the Windows firewall). You can disable the latter two but you must have the first one enabled for this feature to work.

Adi Oltean wrote:

 There will be no Previous Versions displayed if a file didn't change at all between the current version and previous versions on the corresponding restore points. You should see at least one version if you:
1) Create a system restore point containing the file
2) Modify this file
3) Right-click to see its previous versions.

Adi:

Sorry, but been there, done that. I've had system restore enabled on the main Vista partition (C:\) since Feb. 3 and it is definitely creating restore points, and I've changed a lot of files on a daily basis, but there still are no Previous Versions displayed.

I do see previous versions displayed on a network file share that is creating shadow copies on the server (Windows 2003 server), but none on my local C drive.

Jill Zoeller has been trying to help me figure this out, but so far we've come up with no reason why it shouldn't work, but it doesn't.

Very informative video. Can anybody help me figure out why "Previous Versions" are not working for me? I'm running Vista Business, and if I browse to a network share that I have access to (it's on a Windows 2003 server with shadow copies enabled), I can right-click on files or folders and clearly see previous versions of my files.

But no such luck on my local hard disk. I have System Restore enabled on my C drive, I've gone to the command line and checked vssadmin, and I can see that there is 15% of the drive reserved for shadow copies, I can check System Restore and can see that restore points are being created. But no matter what I do, any time that I right-click on a file or folder or even on the entire C drive to check for previous versions, there are never any previous versions available.

What am I doing wrong?