Backup Registry

[club_med]

I did a search but i couldnt find any post dealing with these questions:

1. How do i backup the Registry files?
2. Where do i find them?
3. If i ever have to use the backed-up Registry files, do i just copy and paste them into the respective folder?

Thanks people,
cm.

[oksenior]

club_med

http://abenitez-ebooksandmore.com/Recovery.htm
http://www.polk.k12.nc.us/ftp/eru/?N=D

this program has been a must have since my win95 days and I'm now winme

It works well

oksr.

ps... 98eru\eru.exe in "properties"

[Imperion1]

Easiest way to create a bootable disk is to insert a floppy disk in the floppy drive, right click on the drive icon, left click on format, then click on copy system files to put a checkmark in the box, click on start.

The other way is to create a startup disk.
Click on start, setting, control panel, add-remove programs, startup disk.

[RenaissanceMan]

Windows operating system makes a backup copy of the current registry upon each successful boot of your computer.

There are a couple of different ways to physically make these backups on your own.

1.Click on the Start button, then "Run", Type Regedit then click ok.

2.Then at the top of the registry editor click on "export Registry file".

3.Name the file Regbak.reg and save it in your windows directory.

4.done.

"OR"

click, Start, Then, Run. Type "msinfo32 and then click O.K.

This is Micro$oft system information tools.

From here, click on Tools and then "Registry Checker". the utility will analize your registry and then ask if you would like to make a backup.

then to restore your registry.....
There's ways in W95 to restore to registry from the standard backups; System & User.da0 (all of these actions must be performed in PURE DOS -- either starting up in DOS are shutting down to it -- DON'T TRY THIS IN A DOS WINDOW!!!):

cd\
c:
cd windows
ATTRIB -S -H -R C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.*
ATTRIB -S -H -R C:\WINDOWS\USER.*
ren system.dat system.old
ren system.da0 system.dat
ren user.dat user.old
ren user.da0 user.dat
ATTRIB +S +H +R C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.DAT
ATTRIB +S +H +R C:\WINDOWS\USER.DAT

But you want to use an exported registry. Here I assume you saved it in C:\windows & gave it the name Backup.reg
So all you need to do is (assuming regedit.exe is in C:\windows):

cd\
C:
cd windows
regedit /c Backup.reg

That's it.

WARNING: W95's Regedit.exe has a bug in it's operation that might prevent this from working (long registry keys). Copy the W98 version of Regedit.exe to your system

Or



But if you want to use an exported registry, like the one you made from the registry editor.. ie Regbak.reg

Here I assume you saved it in C:\windows & gave it the name Regbak.reg

So all you need to do is (assuming regedit.exe is in C:\windows):

use a boot disk and boot to the command prompt.
Then change to the windows directory by typing cd\ then press enter
Then type c: and press enter
Then type cd windows and press enter.
Now type Regedit /c regbak.reg
If you typed the commands properly and your saved registry file was in the specified location then you

Will be able to restore your registry.

and to "clean and shrink"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a novice friendly step-by-step HOWTO for CLEANING AND SHRINKING YOUR WIN9x REGISTRY. The suggestions here will allow you to compress the size of your Win9x registry without having to shell out any money to anyone.

The larger your Win9x registry gets, the longer it takes to boot your machine. Besides, there's some concern about the stability of Win9x once the registry size gets out of control. Believe it or not, since it's actually fairly simple to do this, anyone running Win9x ought to do this periodicaly as maintenance.

I'll give an overview first, so you'll have some idea what's going on. First obtain your registry size to determine if it's worth the trouble to proceed. If you're registry is smaller than one megabyte, you should leave well enough alone and devote your energy to other things. If the Win9x registry is in need of compression, you'll clean it and fix any possible errors before you proceed with compression. Next, you'll reboot DIRECTLY into DOS, issue some commands to shrink the registry and reboot back into Win9x. If everything goes well, your registry size ought to be noticeably smaller. Since you are going to be rebooting your computer, you might want to consider printing this document. Do me a favor and print on the back of scraps.

Checking your Win9x registry size: Since you're going to be in DOS for most of this process, I'm going to INTENTIONALLY leave out how to accomplish this in Win9x. DON'T reboot yet! Just shell out to DOS using the MS-DOS PROMPT (if you haven't moved it, click Start, Programs, then MS-DOS PROMPT). From within the DOS prompt, if you're not already in the C:\WINDOWS directory, type c: and then cd \windows (I'm just going to assume that you possess some working knowledge of the ENTER key).
Once you're inside the windows directory, type dir /ah (this tells DOS to list the files with hidden attributes). You'll see a bunch of things listed, but the only thing you're interested in is the size of the SYSTEM.DAT. The filesize is reported to the right of the filename, and is reported in bytes (1 kilobyte=1,024; 1 megabyte=1,048,576). If your filesize is around the one megabyte mark, and you still want to do this, you really ought to look into a hobby of some sort. Type exit to return to Win9x.
Using SCANREG: While SCANREG.EXE only comes installed on Win98 machines, it will nevertheless run beautifully on Win95. Using SCANREG.EXE to clean and compress your registry is almost painless. The only tricky part is obtaining it if you're not already running Win98. Try doing a FTP search for it. If you are not running Win98, or cannot manage to find a copy of SCANREG.EXE, please skip to the Preparing your Win95 registry section. If you managed to get a copy of SCANREG.EXE, save it into your C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND directory first.
It's time now to backup your current registry. You'll have to close all your programs and quit to DOS. To quit to DOS, press the ALT-F4 (in conjunction), and choose Restart the computer in MS-DOS mode? Click on Yes. Once you are in the DOS command prompt, type scanreg /backup. NOTE: This is also an excellent way to periodically backup your registry.
Once you SCANREG.EXE has finished backing up your registry, type scanreg /fix.
If something should go wrong, or you change your mind about this fix, you can restore your old registry by typing scanreg /restore.
Preparing your Win95 registry: Don't worry. Even if you do not have SCANREG.EXE, going through the steps here will give you the SAME EXACT result as using SCANREG.EXE.
You'll want to clean your registry and get rid of any errors that it may contain. If you don't already have Regclean v4.1a from Microsoft, you should download it now. If this site is busy, you can also try ftp://ftp.darmstadt.gmd.de/pub/pc/win95/microsoft/regcln41a.exe. Install and run as usual. Make sure you've cleaned and corrected the errors in your Win95 registry before continuing!
It's now time to backup your Win95 registry files just in case. If you don't know how, or don't want to bother, download http://www.knowplace.org/dl/backNfro.exe. It's a set of batch files that'll automate the backup and restore process. regback.bat will perform backup, and regfro.bat will perform restore. Execute them in either a DOS prompt window or within Win95. They will not work in DOS real mode. backNfro.exe also contains a copy of this document in plain text form called "backNfro.txt."
If you're running Windows 95, you now need to figure out what version your running. If you know you're running Win98 or Win95 OSR2.x, skip to the next step. While holding down the ALT key, double-clicking on MY COMPUTER. If it says v4.00.950 or v4.00.950a, you'll need to download http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~flibble/reg/reg.zip. It's a modified version of REGEDIT.EXE that will run with Win95 and DOS7.0. The "normal" version from the non-OSR2 versions of Win95 will error out if you're trying to compress a large registry (why bother if it's small?).
Click on Start, then Run.... Enter "regedit" at the prompt and click on OK. Make sure My Computer is highlighted. Click on the menu where it says Registry, Export Registry and enter EXPORT.REG at the file name prompt. Make sure that you save EXPORT.REG inside your windows directory (i.e. C:\WINDOWS)!
Shrinking your Win95 registry: This step will now require you to quit to DOS. Quit any and all applications you still have running. Press ALT-F4 (in conjunction), and choose Restart the computer in MS-DOS mode? Click on Yes and off you go to DOS real mode.
Change your current directory to C:\WINDOWS (unless you're already there) by typing c:, then cd \windows (once again, I'm just going to assume you know how to use the ENTER key.
Okay, so strictly speaking, this step isn't necessary, but I find that it helps to speed the process along. Type smartdrv /x.
It's now time to compress your Win95 registry. Type regedit /c export.reg. Wait until it's done and type dir /ah to see what the new size of your Win95 registry. Reboot by pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL in conjunction.
If you want, you might want to consider running regback.bat. Why have backups of a large Win95 registry that you don't ever intend on using again?

Whew!!!! good thing for copy and paste!

[club_med]

The recommended location is a bootable floppy in drive A

This is from the text file at: http://www.polk.k12.nc.us/ftp/eru/?N=D

How do i make a bootable disk ?.

Thanks again,
cm.

[jmatt]

I use this method . John .
http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/regback1.html

[Roy]

I'll confess to not reading every detail in this thread. If this has been mentioned, ignore me. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

Windows allows for as many as 99 backup versions of the registry. The default value is 5. "Run" scanreg.ini to edit/change the MaxBackupCopies value, then Save. I use 20. Also, you can change a few other items, I wouldn't.

[club_med]

Thanks for the info people.

cm.

[Buji]

Here's one for Roy. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif I edited my ini. file to save 10 reg backups, when I use scanreg/restore it only shows 5. There are 10 backups in sysbckup but only 5 are available to restore at the DOS prompt. Any ideas?

[Roy]

Bugi ~ Yes, that's what it shows. I think it cycles back beyond the five if the first tries fail. I guess we'd have to rename an earlier backup to make it use a specific choice.

[This message has been edited by Roy (edited 05-16-2001).]

[starchase]

Buji wrote: "when I use scanreg/restore it only shows 5."

The link above answers this question. In order to make available more than 4 or 5 backups you need a program that will show them all and get around Windows limitation. This link shows you a batch file and the instructions for using it. It's pretty cool.

http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/regback2.html?