How to Backup your Registry:
Your registry is the single most important part of your Windows installation. Everything from how pages are displayed (their x,y points) to your user name and passwords are stored in this repository. If you change anything in the registy and make a mistake the effects can range from no prolems at all to catastrophic failure of your windows installation resulting in you having to reinstall Windows all over again.
To protect yourself from having to reinstall Windows again you can backup your registry so that if anything should happen and a mistake is made you can restore the old version of the registry and try again - or get a pc specialist who knows what they're doing to do it for you.
There are 3 different ways to backup your registry:
1. Using the System Restore:
One way to backup the registry is to create a System Restore point. The System Restore point returns your computer to a previous "snapshot" of your system without you losing recent personal information, such as documents, history lists, favorites, or any e-mails. It monitors the computer and all applications for changes that are made and it creates a restore point before those changes occur. You can then restore your system, using these snapshots, when your configuration isn't working.
Please Note: System Restore points get deleted all the time and for many different reasons, making it an unreliable way to backup your registry, especially in the long run because if you ever need to rollback any registry changes made a long time ago they may have been deleted or the System Restore might have purged that particular restore point - due to space constraints or even a Restore point corruption.
2. Backing up a selected branch of the registry by exporting it:
This method is the preferred method if you're making changes to a specific branch of the registry. To backup a selected key in the registry, use these steps:
* Click Start, and then click Run.
* In the Open box, type regedit.exe, and then click OK
* Locate and then click the key that contains the value that you want to edit
* Right-click on the key and choose Export.
* In the Save in box, select a location where you want to save the Registration Entries (.reg)
* In the File name box, type a file name, and then click Save.
Now that you've created a Registry backup for that particular key, save the .reg file in a safer location in case you ever want to undo the registry changes you have made. You can restore the settings by just double-clicking the .reg file. It automatically merges the contents to the Registry.
3. Backing up the entire registry by exporting it:
As above except in this case you will backup the registry in its entirety.
* Click Start, and then click Run.
* In the Open box, type regedit.exe, and then click OK
* At the very top of the Registry page you will see 'Computer'
* Right-click on 'Computer' and choose Export.
* In the Save in box, select a location where you want to save the Registration Entries (.reg)
* In the File name box, type a file name, and then click Save.
Again you can restore the settings by just double-clicking the .reg file. It will automatically merge the contents to the Registry.
