I understand why you cannot delete selected points, and why older points get deleted first. If conserving space on hard drive is your main concern you can limit the space from within windows.
My interest in deleting points is to keep a "fresh install" in system restore and not use ghost or a cloning program. So that leaves not permitting windows to create any new restore points. Some updates, system checkpoints and program installations automatically create restore points.
Is there a way to create an initial restore point and keep windows from creating any subsequent points.
Nope, you cannot create a first/initial system restore point and then save it. Yes that would have been nice, but as pointed out above, turning off system restore subsequently, will delete the points.
If you want to keep an image of your initial install, you will have to use an imaging program. Besides the fact that system restore from Vista restore points is one of the less reliable functions in Vista, you also want to protect yourself against an HDD failure. And that is possible with an imaging program because the images are being written to a disk other than the OS disk.
A while ago a made a little summary of the various options (not exhaustive) that you find here: Ghosting approaches - summary because of popular demand How-To Geek Forums
Last edited by whs; 27th August 2009 at 18:00.
Reason: typo
Go to task scheduler - library - microsoft - windows - system restore
Delete the entry there. Vista unknowingly creates restore points almost every day. You can still create restore points manually after deleting the task.
While your there you can delete another major annoyance, defrag. Delete the entry, and you won`t have your hard drive churning all day, sending it to a premature death. Again, you can manually defrag at your convenience. You might want to try UltimateDefrag, it`s free, and 10 times faster too!