Registry - Backup and Restore

Hey John,

It's most certainly faster to just export the whole registry. You could still copy and paste what you want from the .reg file to create other .reg to import only what you want from it.

Of course, a system image is the best backup though.

Thanks Shawn was just curious and I do a weekly image or extras if feel something is going south:)

Hello Matt,

Sorry, but no. Most of it would not merge.

You could do a system restore using a restore point dated before to undo it though.

You could give it a try, but it won't merge any part of the registry that's in use by the system. You'll need to restart the PC afterwards to fully apply.

All, I am a new member and got here by surfing for solution to an issue I got myself into but cannot figure out how to fix. My PC woldn't start and was looping. I found all kinds of answers from tons of web pages and literally tried them all 2-3 even 5times, over 2 weeks of intermittent access - rebooting after each attempt without any success at all. In the end, I just reinstalled Win7 x64 ULT on the same HDD and now, as many others have discovered, all of my Prgs and Apps are no longer listed or clickable. Like others I foound a Windows.Old with everything inside, but unlike others I also had made a backup of my registry before I started trying to fix this PC, thinking maybe I could try a 'trick' that an old crusty Win2003 Server builder and migration expert had showed me. Once. I just cannot recall the HOW The story is, we got a stack of brand new servers and a box of tapes and disks. We installed Win 2003 Server on the boxes, then installed the tape backup software to each one, plugged in an LTO-3 tape drive, popped in a tape marked 001 of 3, and restored all the apps for the next 2 days to that 1 server. This was repeated again and again for the next 1500 or so boxes until 3yrs later the job was complete.

At the end of any server build, we'd reboot, and grab the server name, MAC address, IP and THEN, while still on that server, call a number and the person on the other end would give us an IP address to go to (on their corporate server farm) and a client name where the ORIGINAL servers registry snapshots were. He'd facititate access, issue a temp PW and we'd remote over, locate the Reg Key file in their server farm with the same name as the server we just finished, login to IT using the temporary credentials, access its registry and export a copy to the root\temp dir of that share. Then back at our site, we'd launch the registry tool on our server, point to that directory of that same share and 'import' it across the web to OUR machines registry. (Yikes!) Dead simple right? Anyway, when we restarted the server, BANG! all apps and data were linked, desktop Icons were functional and it was basically a bigger, better, faster, exact duplicate of the original build they made our tapes from - inclusing all accounts, logins etc for their team back at source. Now THEY could go in remotely and tweak everything they needed for their purposes and future use. Does this 'Reg-trick' sound familiar to any of you, and if so can I use it to import the copy of my registry to do the same? I ask b/c IF this trick is specific to Win 2003 Servers - I'll probably totally hose my machine and never get it right again. It is booting 100% now, but I've lost use of over 100 installed apps and such that I'd dearly miss and would take me years to replace and reinstall. Thanks!