I have had winrescue for win 98 and win ME, I am now running win xp home edition. When my winrescue backup (backing up the registry files) gets to 8% everything locks up, and stays that way for close to a minute, then it takes off again and completes. Even the alt ctl del doesnt respond at this time. Is this normal for everyone? My other winrescues never did that before. Winrescue XP did that from the first time i ran the registry backup. Is it locking out the registry files? or what?

Yes, that is normal.  WinXP has to use a different process to back up the registry and that process locks everything up for a short amount of time.  That is the way it has to be.