Hi All,

I've searched the MS Knowledge base until I'm blue in the face. Entering the phrase "Registry Backup" and the like leads absolutely nowhere. In as much as we are so frequently directed to "Backup your Registry before proceeding ..." etc., why doesn't Microsoft clearly show us how.

So, the question is, 'How do we back up the registry to a safe place - such as an externa Hard Drive, or even a folder in a local drive, other than C:\?

I'd certainly appreciate learning how to do it.

Regards, John Membrino

   Backing up the registry used to be possible in earlier versions of Windows, but with Windows NT, 2000, XP, and now Vista, it takes special processes to backup the registry which are not available to the Windows user.  The only way in Windows to backup the registry is to use System Restore and create a Restore Point.  That cannot be backed up to another drive.
   We have WinRescue which can backup the registry to any location.  It can also do some other things with the registry that System Restore cannot do.  Find more information about WinRescue XP at http://superwin.com/rescuexp.htm.

Ray, I think that MS does provide an easy way to back up the "system state", including the registry, to another drive on Win2000 - I do it often - and I think that it also exists on WinXP.

If I'm not mistaken, MS also supplies another means for backing up the registry alone to another drive on Win2000, though they discontinued it in WinXP.

Would you object if I explained?  I don't think that either of the built-in MS methods is really competition for the backup function in WinRescue.  One of them includes the registry with some other system files in a gigantic backup file, and the other, if I understand correctly, not only creates a giant file, but also a clunky one which I'm not sure I'd trust.

Thanks.
C.

Go for it.
If you are talking about using RegEdit to export the registry, that is not a backup.

One of my ideas was indeed RegEdit.  I wouldn't want to use it as a backup, but since I can't figure out many other uses for the setting to import or export the entire registry, I assume that that's what MS intended that function to be used for.  (I can actually think of one other use, but it's irrelevant here.)

My other idea, which I do myself, is to use the Windows backup utility (ntbackup.exe on Win2000) to make a backup of the "system state" only on another drive.  (I don't think that there's a way to use it to back up the registry only.  It's more like creating a system restore point, I think.)  Even though I do it, I can see two big disadvantages to it:
1.  I don't see why one should have to restore all of one's boot files just to fix a registry problem.  It looks to me like looking for trouble.
2.  The backup is a lot bigger than the registry alone.  My registry (my config folder, really) is about 24MB, but my SysState.bkf is 230MB!  Just for comparison, I just used the backup gadget of RegVac, which I imagine is similar or identical to that of WinRescue, to make a registry backup, and it's about 21 MB.  Also, Ray's gadget is a lot faster: about 3 or 4 seconds for RegVac, vs. about 5 minutes for ntbackup.

At least MS definitely considers this a registry backup. See the paragraph "Manual steps to back up the whole registry" in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756 .

By the way, John, it's well known that the search gadget for the MS KB is, um, unhelpful.  If you type the word "Microsoft" followed by the words you really want into Google, (producing , for example, http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=microsoft+back+up+registry ), the knowledge base article you need will often be one of the first results.  It's funny that the only way to use the MS KB efficiently is by using their arch-enemy's search tool, but that's the way it is.

Thanks.
C.

   I was thinking mainly WinXP.
   WinNT and Win2000 does have ntbackup.exe.  I don't think WinXP has it (I could not find it on my computer) and I doubt that WinVista will have it either.

   An export from RegEdit is not a backup and should not be used as a backup for a few reasons.
   One is that the file produced by an export is a completely different format (and much bigger) than the registry files.  So if Windows crashes, you cannot just replace the registry files with the export file.
   You also cannot restore the export unless regedit is able to run because it is actually regedit that reenters the data from an export into the registry.  So unless Windows can start and run regedit, the export file will do you no good.
   Yet another problem is that restoring an export file does not delete any of the old entries in the registry.  So if a virus or bad entries were installed in the registry, restoring an export file will do no good.
   About all that an export file is good for is if you deleted something in the registry and need to get it back.