The Registry
Explanation, Backup, and Restoring
The Registry is the very heart of Windows, it stores critical information and settings that apply to your computer. The information that's stored is referenced almost continually during your computer's operation. These settings deal with everything from user profiles to how applications run to what hardware your computer has. The Registry is usually thought of as one file but it is actually two hidden files in your Windows folder named, system.dat and user.dat. It's important to know about your Registry because if one or both of these files gets damaged then your computer may not boot. So it's always a good plan to make a backup in case disaster strikes and not to edit it unless you are absolutely sure of what you are doing.
In order to do a registry check while in Windows XP, click on the Start Menu, then go to All Programs, then to Accessories, then to System Tools and then click on Backup.
This should bring you to a screen like the one on the right. This is the normal Backup and Restore Wizard. From this screen we'll want to click the Advanced Mode link. This will bring us to a menu that has several sets of tabs. Under the Welcome tab click the Backup Wizard icon and choose the option to only back up the System State data. Once you choose where you would like to save your backup to you can click the Finish button and you have created a backup of your Registry.
If the time comes to restore your Registry then you go back to the Backup utility in the System Tools folder. Choose the Advanced feature again, and go to the Restore and Manage Media tab. When restoring from a backup that you have made you simply have to chose the file you want to restore. Windows automatically dates every backup made so that you can choose the backup you wish to use.
There are several different ways you can chose to restore your files. The Original location is used if you are restoring your whole computer, so we'll want to have this one checked. Once you have done that we need to chose the method that we want the backup to use. So we go to Tools and then Options and selected the option to Always replace the file on my computer. Then we click Start Restore. We'll want to Confirm the Restore by pressing Okay and then the restore process will begin.
Using this kind of registry back up and restore is really only needed for serious computer crashes. Windows will normally make a backup of the registry on it's own. Backing up your registry is an extra precaution you can take, but under most circumstances you will not need to modify your registry.
For more information on this you can go to: Description of the Microsoft Windows Registry (Q256986)
Last Updated: 04/24/2008