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Point-in-time restore for Windows 365 Business

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Point-in-time restore lets end users restore a Cloud PC to the exact state it was at an earlier point in time.

Windows 365 Business admins can also restore Cloud PCs to an earlier state on behalf of their users.

Restore point intervals

Short-term restore points are saved every 12 hours. Each Cloud PC will have 10 short-term restore points saved at these intervals.

In addition to these short-term restore points, there are also four long-term restore points. These long-term restore points are saved every seven days.

As time passes and a new short-term or long-term restore point is added, the oldest short-term/long-term (respectively) restore point is removed.

Risks and results of restoring a Cloud PC

Cloud PCs have same risks as all Windows PCs when performing a full disk restore. These risks and results include:

  • All changes made to the Cloud PC between the saved restore point and when the restore is started will be lost. This lost information includes all data, documents, installed applications, configurations, downloads, and other changes. External data stored in cloud services, like OneDrive, won't be lost.
  • Various applications, agents and tools also use rolling passwords, secrets, certificates, and keys. If any of these credentials are updated between the current time and the restore point, the associated service or application will be impacted.
  • The chances of data loss and automated machine account password updates increase with longer time gaps between the selected restore point and the current time.

Best practices

  • To minimize data loss and the risk of a rolling password conflict, choose a restore point that is as close as possible to the current time.
  • After a restoration is complete, the user should immediately sign into their Cloud PC to verify that they can successfully connect. If a user can't connect, or experiences unexpected behavior, try a second restoration to a different restore point that is more recent. On rare occasions, you may need to reprovision/reset a Cloud PC if all restore points have obsolete rolling credentials.

End user interface

To restore their Cloud PC, an end user must sign in to https://windows365.microsoft.com, select the gear icon, select Restore, and follow the onscreen prompts.

Next steps

Manage your Cloud PCs