Fix System Restore Error 0x80070091 (Windows 11 & 10)
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If System Restore fails with error 0x80070091 and the message names %ProgramFiles%\WindowsApps, the fix is not to reinstall Windows. Boot into the restore point selection screen, turn on hidden files, find the WindowsApps folder, press F2, and rename it to anything else. Restart and run System Restore again — it will usually go through this time. This works the same way on Windows 11 and Windows 10; only the path to get there differs.
Here's the part that trips people up: renaming that folder — not deleting it, not repairing it, not running a scan on it — is genuinely the whole fix. System Restore isn't choking on a corrupt restore point. It's choking on that one folder name, and a rename is often all it takes to get past it.
If you've never seen this error before, the wording is worth reading carefully the first time it pops up: "System Restore did not complete successfully. Your system files and settings were not changed." Then, underneath, a specific complaint about an unspecified error at %ProgramFiles%\WindowsApps, with the code 0x80070091 attached. Windows is telling you exactly where it stopped. Most error dialogs don't hand you that much information, so it's worth using it instead of skipping straight to a reinstall.
We first documented this fix back when it showed up on a Windows 10 machine, and the same underlying mechanism still shows up on Windows 11 today. The steps below cover both, in order, so skip to whichever one matches your PC.
What error 0x80070091 actually means
0x80070091 is a generic Windows error code, not one invented specifically for System Restore. On its own the number tells you almost nothing. What matters is the sentence that comes with it, because that's what narrows it down to this exact fix: System Restore reporting the failure at the WindowsApps folder inside Program Files.
WindowsApps is the folder where your Store apps actually live — things like Calculator, Photos, and any UWP app you've installed from the Microsoft Store. It's hidden and locked down harder than a normal folder, which is exactly why it's a plausible place for a restore operation to stumble: System Restore has to walk through and account for files in that folder as part of rolling your system back to an earlier point, and on some machines that walk fails outright.
🙋♂️ Jake's Reality Check
"So it's not actually my restore point that's broken? Because I was about to tell this customer her point from last month is useless and she's out of luck."
Correct — the restore point is fine. It's one specific folder tripping up the restore process, not the snapshot you're trying to go back to. That's good news, because it means you don't need a different, older restore point to get past this.
Ethan's take: "The number of people who go straight from this error to 'guess I'm reinstalling Windows' is the real problem here. A full reinstall is hours of your day and every setting you've ever configured, gone. This fix is five minutes and a restart."
The fix on Windows 11
There are two starting points, depending on whether your desktop still works.
If Windows 11 still boots
Go to Settings > System > Recovery. This is the Windows 11 equivalent of hunting through Control Panel — the underlying recovery tools haven't moved, only where you launch them from. From there, or from the classic Control Panel search for "Recovery" if you prefer the old route, open System Restore and get to the screen where you pick a restore point.
If Windows 11 won't boot to a desktop
You'll land on the blue Automatic Repair screen, or you can trigger it yourself by holding Shift while clicking Restart at the sign-in screen, or by booting from a Windows 11 installation USB drive and choosing Repair your computer. From there: Troubleshoot > Advanced options > System Restore.
The rename itself — same on both paths
Once you're at the screen listing restore points, look for a "Show more restore points" or Browse option that lets you open a file dialog rather than just picking from the list. Inside that dialog:
1. Turn on hidden items. There's a checkbox or a View menu toggle for this — it needs to be on, because WindowsApps is hidden by default.
2. Navigate to C:\Program Files.
3. Click once on the WindowsApps folder to select it.
4. Press F2.
5. Type a new name — anything works, even something obvious like "WindowsApps-old" — and press Enter.
🕐 What changed since we first wrote this
- Then: on Windows 10, you reached this dialog through the classic Control Panel recovery tools or the blue recovery screen, and the file browser inside it was the standard Windows file dialog.
- Now: Windows 11 added a Settings-based front door (Settings > System > Recovery) alongside the same Control Panel path, but the actual browse-for-a-restore-point dialog you land in is still the older-style file browser, not the modern Windows 11 File Explorer.
- What that means for you: the right-click menu inside that recovery dialog has Rename sitting right there, not tucked under "Show more options" the way it is in a normal Windows 11 desktop session. Pressing F2 sidesteps the question entirely.
Close the dialog, restart the PC, and start System Restore from scratch using the same restore point you intended to use before. On most machines it now completes without the error.
The fix on Windows 10
These steps are the same as Windows 11 once you're inside the browse dialog — only how you get there differs.
If the desktop still loads: Control Panel > Recovery > Open System Restore, or search "Create a restore point" from the Start menu and click System Restore from the System Properties window that opens.
If it won't boot: from the automatic repair screen, or a Windows 10 installation USB, go to Troubleshoot > Advanced options > System Restore. Same menu wording as Windows 11, since it's the same recovery environment underneath both versions.
From there, follow the identical five steps above: Browse, show hidden items, go to C:\Program Files, select WindowsApps, F2, rename, Enter. Restart, retry the restore.
⚠️ What this actually breaks
Nothing, as long as you rename rather than delete. A rename doesn't remove any app data; it just changes what the folder is called long enough for the restore process to get past it. Deleting WindowsApps outright is a different and much riskier action — don't reach for Delete when Rename is what the fix calls for.
If the rename itself won't go through
Sometimes F2 does nothing, or you get an access-denied message the moment you try. Here's what each failure mode actually tells you, and what to do about it:
| What you see | What it means | What to try |
|---|---|---|
| "Access is denied" on rename | The recovery environment's browse dialog doesn't have enough permission on this specific machine. | Back up your files, then consider a repair install or clean install instead of continuing down this path. |
| Can't find WindowsApps at all | Hidden items is still switched off, or you're looking in the wrong Program Files (some 64-bit PCs also have Program Files (x86)). | Double-check the hidden items checkbox, and confirm you're in C:\Program Files, not the x86 one. |
| Restore fails again with the same code after the rename | The rename didn't stick, or something else is also blocking the restore alongside WindowsApps. | Confirm the folder shows the new name before restarting. If it's already renamed and the error persists, this fix has reached its limit on this machine. |
| A different error code entirely | You're dealing with a different underlying failure than the one this fix addresses. | Note the exact code and error text before searching further — System Restore's various failure codes are not interchangeable, and matching the wrong fix to the wrong code wastes your time. |
If you land in that first row, be honest with yourself about what you're doing: this is not a "keep trying variations of the same trick" situation. Some machines have a permissions problem this workaround genuinely cannot reach. Trying to force it usually costs you more time than just backing up and moving to a repair install.
🙋♂️ Jake's Reality Check
"What if I just keep clicking Browse and trying different restore points? Would that get past it?"
No. The error is tied to the WindowsApps folder, not to which restore point you picked. Switching restore points won't touch the actual blocker.
The drive-letter trap almost nobody warns you about
One thing that catches even experienced fixers off guard: inside the recovery environment, drive letters aren't guaranteed to match what you're used to on the desktop. The drive you know as C: during normal use is occasionally assigned a different letter — D: or E: — once you're inside WinRE, especially on PCs with a separate recovery partition or multiple drives. If you navigate to C:\Program Files and it looks empty, or Program Files itself isn't there, don't assume the fix has failed. Back out of the Browse dialog and check the other drive letters for a Windows folder and a Program Files folder that actually has content in it before concluding anything is broken.
Ethan's take: "This one wastes more time than the actual fix does. People see an empty folder, panic, and start reading about corrupted drives, when really they're just one letter off."
No recovery partition, a VM, or an OEM laptop that removed it
Everything above assumes you can get to the blue Advanced options screen through the PC's own recovery partition. Two situations break that assumption, and both are more common than people expect.
OEM laptops with a shrunk or missing recovery partition
Some manufacturer builds trim the recovery partition down over time, or a previous repair attempt removed it entirely. If holding Shift and clicking Restart just boots straight back to the desktop instead of showing recovery options, that's usually why. You don't need the manufacturer's partition for this fix — a plain Windows installation USB drive, created on any other working PC, gets you to the same Repair your computer > Troubleshoot > Advanced options > System Restore menu, and from there the fix is identical to the steps above.
Running Windows in a virtual machine
If the affected install is a VM — Hyper-V, VMware, or VirtualBox, for Jake's shop testing customer images before handing them back, this comes up more than you'd think — the process is the same, with one extra step: attach a Windows installation ISO to the VM as its virtual DVD drive first, then boot from it and choose Repair your computer rather than Install. Once you're in Advanced options, everything from here matches the physical-PC steps exactly.
Third-party backup tools worth knowing about
Built-in Windows Backup and File History cover the basics but only back up files, not a full system image you could drop onto a replacement drive in minutes. If you fix PCs regularly, or you just want a safety net that doesn't depend on System Restore working at all, it's worth knowing the honest trade-offs between the common options.
| Option | What it actually gives you | When to skip it |
|---|---|---|
| Windows Backup / File History | Free, built in, backs up your personal files and folders. No effort to set up. | If you want a full system you can restore onto new hardware, not just documents and photos. |
| A dedicated imaging tool (e.g. Macrium Reflect Free) | A full disk image, including Windows itself, that you can restore onto a replacement drive. | If you only ever need to recover a handful of personal files, this is more setup than you need. |
| Cloud backup subscription | Off-site protection that survives a stolen or physically destroyed PC, not just a failed restore. | If your data is small enough that an external drive covers you and you don't need off-site protection. |
| A plain external drive, copied by hand | Zero cost, works right now, no software to trust. | If you'd genuinely forget to do it regularly — a backup you don't keep up with isn't a backup. |
✅ Why this is the one to use
For a single home PC, the plain external drive wins on simplicity: you already know how to use it, and there's no subscription to lapse. For a shop handling multiple customer machines, a dedicated imaging tool earns its keep because restoring a full image is faster than rebuilding a customer's setup by hand.
Before you touch anything: protect your data first
System Restore is built to roll back cleanly if it fails, and it tells you as much in the error dialog itself: your files and settings were not changed. But "the tool is supposed to fail safely" is not the same as "you have a backup." Any time you're touching recovery tools on a PC that won't boot normally, that's exactly the moment a customer's photos or a business's invoices are most at risk, and it's the wrong time to discover there's no copy anywhere else.
If the PC can still boot into the recovery environment at all, plugging in an external drive and copying off anything irreplaceable before you attempt the rename takes a few minutes and costs you nothing if the fix works cleanly — it's only wasted time if you skip it and something goes wrong.
Ethan's take: "I've watched people spend an hour trying every registry trick they can find for a boot problem, on a machine with zero backup, when copying the family photos off first would have taken five minutes. Do the boring thing first."
Once you're past this immediate error and back into a working desktop, it's also worth checking Windows's own repair tools as routine maintenance, not just as a reaction to a crash: an elevated Command Prompt running sfc /scannow, followed by DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth if that turns anything up, catches a category of file corruption that System Restore doesn't touch at all. Neither of these is the fix for 0x80070091 specifically, but they're the natural next check once your PC is stable again.
Make sure this doesn't catch you off guard again
This entire fix only works because a restore point already existed. On plenty of Windows 11 PCs, System Restore protection isn't turned on by default for the main drive, so it's worth a quick check while everything is fresh in your mind rather than finding out the hard way next time. Search "Create a restore point" from the Start menu, select your system drive under Protection Settings, and click Configure to confirm protection is turned on. If it's off, turning it on and creating one restore point right now takes under a minute and means next time won't start from zero.
🙋♂️ Jake's Reality Check
"Every customer PC I hand back — should I just turn this on for them before it leaves the shop?"
Worth doing. It costs nothing, and it means the next time something goes wrong, they at least have a restore point to fall back on — even if it's this exact error, now you both know the fix.
Questions people ask after this fix
What causes System Restore error 0x80070091?
On the machines we've seen this on, System Restore's own error text points at %ProgramFiles%\WindowsApps. The restore process is failing while it tries to work with that folder specifically, not with the restore point itself.
Will renaming the WindowsApps folder break my Store apps?
You're renaming, not deleting, so nothing is removed. The restore that follows resolves the folder's state as part of the rollback, so there's nothing left to manually put back afterward.
Do I need to show hidden files to find WindowsApps?
Yes. It's hidden and protected by default, so you need "Show hidden items" turned on in the recovery dialog before you can even see it to select it.
Does this fix work the same on Windows 11 as Windows 10?
The core trick — Browse, show hidden items, rename WindowsApps, retry — is identical on both. Only the route you take to reach the restore point screen differs, and even that overlaps a lot between the two.
What if I can't rename the WindowsApps folder at all?
An access-denied message on the rename means the recovery environment doesn't have enough permission on that particular machine, and this workaround has hit its ceiling. Back up your data and move to a repair install or clean install instead of forcing it.
Is 0x80070091 the same as other System Restore error codes?
No. Different codes point at different failures. If your error text doesn't mention WindowsApps, you're dealing with something else and this specific fix won't apply.
Do I lose my files if System Restore fails partway through?
System Restore is designed to roll itself back and tell you nothing changed. Even so, never start a restore on a machine with unbacked-up data — a mid-restore failure is exactly the scenario a backup exists for.
Can I do this without a separate boot into recovery?
Yes, if System Restore still opens normally from a working desktop, you do the exact same rename inside that same browse dialog. Advanced Startup and the recovery environment are only needed when Windows won't boot far enough to open System Restore on its own.
Should I try System Restore at all if my PC won't boot?
Yes — that's precisely what System Restore inside the recovery environment is built for. You can reach it from the automatic repair screen or an installation USB drive without ever getting a working desktop first.
Why does the file browser in recovery mode look old-fashioned on Windows 11?
The browse-for-a-restore-point dialog runs inside the Windows Recovery Environment, which still uses the classic Windows file browser rather than the modern Windows 11 File Explorer. Rename sits right on the plain right-click menu there — no "Show more options" step involved.
Is System Restore still worth using on Windows 10 after October 2025?
Yes. System Restore is a local recovery feature, unrelated to security updates, so it works exactly the same on an unsupported Windows 10 22H2 machine as it did before end of support. Whether to also look at Windows 11 eligibility or Extended Security Updates is a separate decision worth thinking through alongside this.
What if there are no restore points to choose from?
If System Restore was never turned on, or every restore point has expired, there's nothing to select and this fix doesn't apply — it depends on at least one existing restore point.
Should I rename WindowsApps back afterward?
You can, but in practice a successful restore already brings the folder back to whatever state the restore point saved, so there's typically nothing left for you to manually undo.
Does this same trick apply to System Image Recovery?
No. System Image Recovery is a separate, full-image restore tool with its own dialogs, so this particular workaround doesn't carry over to it.
Could my antivirus be blocking the rename?
Unlikely. The Windows Recovery Environment doesn't run your normal antivirus software at all, so if the rename is blocked, it's almost always a plain permissions issue with the folder rather than security software interfering.
Why does C: sometimes show nothing in the recovery browse dialog?
The recovery environment can assign drive letters differently than your desktop session does. What you know as C: normally is occasionally a different letter here. Check the other letters in the same dialog for your actual Windows and Program Files folders before assuming anything is wrong.
My laptop has no recovery partition — can I still do this?
Yes, as long as System Restore was turned on and you have at least one restore point, the manufacturer's recovery partition isn't required. A Windows installation USB drive, made on any working PC, gets you to the same Advanced options menu.
Revision note. Originally published February 26, 2017. Rewritten August 16, 2026 for Windows 11 and Windows 10. The core fix hasn't changed since we first ran into it — what's moved is how you get to it: Windows 11 added a Settings-based recovery entry point alongside the classic Control Panel one, and Windows 10 has since reached end of support, though System Restore itself works exactly as before either way. If you're staring at this error at 11pm with a PC that won't boot, we hope the five-minute version above saves you the night we didn't have back in 2017.