Archive for June, 2007

Restoring your registry

Saturday, June 23rd, 2007

You probably know that the registry is what holds the most important information connected to your computer. It knows everything from what hardware you have to all the software that has been installed in your computer and all the details about the kind of windows setup you have. Just as in the case of windows, backing it up when your computer runs well can prove a very good idea. So whenever you have a problem you can just restore it and you will have a fully functional computer again. If you decide to do that you must know that the registry already exist usually as a file stored in c:\windows\system.dat or in c:\windows\user.dat.  there files are usually hidden and probabli restricted so you wont be able to see them. You must go to the view folder option in your windows explorer and select the option view all files. It allows you to see the hidden files also.  Than look fore the 2 mentioned above and there you go. You can now safely see them.

 

You might also want to include the fallowing files in your backup because they are what actually control the way windows starts: c:\windows\win.ini and c:\windows\system.ini.

 

Here we have 2 ways.

 

The simplest one is to just copy them and paste them in another file you name backup…make sure you do not actually move them or cut them instead of just copying them.  And there you go, you have a backup of your registry.

 

The safer way is to boot your computer by using a boot disc or press F8 when starting your computer just before it saris windows is starting up. As your option select Command Prompt Only and type

cd c:\  
mkdir backup  
cd c:\windows    
attrib user.dat -h -r  
attrib system.dat -h -r    
copy user.dat c:\backup    
copy system.dat c:\backup    
copy win.ini c:\backup    
copy system.ini c:\backup    
attrib user.dat +h +r    
attrib system.dat +h +r    

This is how your registry is properly backed up. Though there are probably a lot of other ways of doing this it has been proven that these one is the most efficient one. To ease your job just past the commands in a notepad file and replace the cd commands with full paths and save it under the name backup.bat. and every time you want to restore your settings just run it.