Registry Backup and Restore

Resplendent Registrar offers the possibility to make a backup of the entire registry which can be restored later.

When you choose to make a backup, a snapshot of the entire registry will be written to disk. You will be prompted for a description that will be saved along with the backup. A backup may take several seconds or longer, depending on the size of your registry. You will not be able to use Resplendent Registrar while a backup is in progress.

Note that backing up your registry is not the same as exporting to a registration file. A backup will also save user inaccessible keys and data that usually do not get exported with the export feature. On Windows XP, 2000 and NT, also security settings are stored, including permissions, auditing and ownership information and not just names and contents of the keys and values.

Backing up your registry often is a good safety measure. Many application and system related problems can be solved by restoring a previous backup of your registry. In such a case it is better to have a recent backup available that closely matches the data of your current registry situation.

Creating a Registry Backup

In order to create a backup, click the Backup button and wait. An image of the entire registry, including the entire rootkeys HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and HKEY_USERS will be written to disk. The program will notify you when the backup is ready.

Restoring a Registry Backup

To restore a registry backup which was made by Registrar, click on one of the listed available backups, and press Restore. 

If you are running Windows XP, 2000 or NT the restore process will take place immediately. When the restore is complete, you will be prompted to restart Windows, which is highly recommended. The new registry will not take become effective until the next time the system is restarted. This means that if you choose not to restart your computer immediately, any changes that will be made to the registry will get lost.

If you are running Windows 95 or 98 then the restore process must be done manually. Please refer to the instructions to manually  restore a registry backup on Windows 95,98 or ME .

The Backup To and Restore From buttons allow you  to backup to and restore from a specific folder. You will be prompted to browse to a specific folder which contains a registry backup made by Registrar.

Note that after a registry restore, your registry has also been defragmented. For more information refer to Defragmenting your Registry.

Deleting Registry Backups

You can delete backups which are no longer needed by pressing the Delete button.

Command Line Options

There are command line options to create an automated backup or restore. See Command Line Options for details.