Debate On Best Backup Of Registry

[Paul Berkow]

Hi To All,
Am having a discussion as to which is the best way to backup the
Registry.
I know that just exporting and importing the Registry does not put the
Registry
back to as it was before any new entries were made.

I've been told that doing a System Restore does not wipe out all new entries
either.

I was told that the only way to put a Registry back as it was before new
entries,
is to do a System State backup using the Microsoft Backup utility.

Is the correct, and if not what method puts a Registry back, wiping out any
and
all new entries, the way it was ?

Paul

Thanks

 

[R. McCarty]

Imaging (IMO) is the best solution. The Registry is an integral
part of an XP instance or install. Trying to "Preserve" it without
all the other components that make up XP seems deficient.An
image guarantees that everything (Disk data,Apps) are sync'd
properly.

 

[Paul Berkow]

What do you mean by Imaging ? What utility do I use ?

 

[R. McCarty]

Imaging refers to a program that can take an entire drive or
partition and create a module or set of modules that contains
a complete, but compressed copy of the drive. The end result
modules are not user readable, but must be recovered or be
accessed with the originating imaging program or tool. Think
of it in the same way as "Zipping" files and folders into a single
compressed file. Images are invaluable because a system can
be completely restored to a previous state in a fairly quick
operation. There is a little more to the operation than what I've
listed - but this is essentially what it does.

 

[Rock]

What do you mean by Imaging ? What utility do I use ?

Imaging is a process by which a complete image of the drive / partition
is created in a compressed format and saved on another medium. The best
is to save it to an external medium such as DVD or a USB hard drive.
Then if there is a problem the complete drive image can be restored.
Restores can also be done, depending on the program, on a file/directory
basis. Programs that do this are Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image, and
Terabyte Unlimited's Image for Windows and BootIt NG.

 

[Rock]

What do you mean by Imaging ? What utility do I use ?

For backing up just the registry use ERUNT. It works well.
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/erunt.txt

 

[Wesley Vogel]

IMO, using ERUNT is the best way to backup the registry.

NTREGOPT NT Registry Optimizer
ERUNT The Emergency Recovery Utility NT
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/

Direct download links (the zip files just need unzipping and dropping on the
drive. {Thank you, Jim}
http://aumha.org/downloads/erunt.zip

http://aumha.org/downloads/ntregopt.zip

ERUNT [[Note: The "Export registry" function in Regedit is USELESS (!) to
make a complete backup of the registry. Neither does it export the whole
registry (for example, no information from the "SECURITY" hive is
saved), nor can the exported file be used later to replace the current
registry with the old one. Instead, if you re-import the file, it is
merged with the current registry, leaving you with an absolute mess of
old and new registry keys.]]
http://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/erunt/erunt.txt

NTREGOPT [[Similar to Windows 9x/Me, the registry files in an NT-based
system can become fragmented over time, occupying more space on your hard
disk than necessary and decreasing overall performance. You should
use the NTREGOPT utility regularly, but especially after installing
or uninstalling a program, to minimize the size of the registry files
and optimize registry access.

The program works by recreating each registry hive "from scratch",
thus removing any slack space that may be left from previously
modified or deleted keys.

Note that the program does NOT change the contents of the registry in
any way, nor does it physically defrag the registry files on the drive
(as the PageDefrag program from SysInternals does). The optimization
done by NTREGOPT is simply compacting the registry hives to the
minimum size possible.]]
http://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/erunt/ntregopt.txt

Installing & Using ERUNT
http://www.silentrunners.org/sr_eruntuse.html

To see an illustrated registry restore procedure
http://www.silentrunners.org/sr_erdntuse.html

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Sun, 19 Jun 2005 16:32:38 -0400, "Paul Berkow"

Am having a discussion as to which is the best way to backup the
Registry. I know that just exporting and importing the Registry does not
put the Registry back to as it was before any new entries were made.

I've been told that doing a System Restore does not wipe out all new entries
either.

SR does a lot of other things, besides revert the registry. That's
good from a perspective of consistency, but bad if you'd rather dent a
few things and fix them yourself my limiting your fallback to registry
alone. Unfortunately, XP lacks the 5-shot cyclical registry backup
that Win98 and WinME used to have; it's more like Win95's 1-shot
backup, and it shoots that shot too early (i.e. writes the current
over the backup while there is still a chance that late boot errors
can render the system unbootable, and "last good" thus useless)

I was told that the only way to put a Registry back as it was before new
entries, is to do a System State backup using the Microsoft Backup utility.

Is the correct, and if not what method puts a Registry back, wiping out any
and all new entries, the way it was ?

I use ERUNT (free download, old versions may fail on SP1 and SP2, get
the latest) to make multiple registry backups from within the OS, but
so far, touch wood, I've not had to restore any of them.

ERUNT may not back up *all* registry hives, only active ones. The big
problem there are accounts that aren'y logged in, especially as the
per-account registry seems (a) particularly prone to catastrophic
loss, and (b) devoid of any "last good" fallback whatsoever.

The other option is to manage this stuff out of band. If FATxx and
under 137G, you can do that from DOS mode; if NTFS, you'd have to use
Bart's PE. In the absence of any MS presence, Bart's PE is the de
facto standard maintenance OS for XP - i.e. what can manage the
installation without auto-writes to HD or running any code from there.
For such purposes, Safe Mode isn't.

See http://cquirke.mvps.org/whatmos.htm on mOS options.

--------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - -

Who is General Failure and
why is he reading my disk?

 

[Richard Urban]

I have to wonder why Microsoft changed that. Having various dates to go back
to was nice. It's not like today's hard drive could not accommodate at least
3-4 full registry backups. It would be nice to have a choice again of "last
known good"!

--
Regards,

Richard Urban

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Sun, 19 Jun 2005 16:40:51 -0400, "R. McCarty"

Imaging (IMO) is the best solution. The Registry is an integral
part of an XP instance or install. Trying to "Preserve" it without
all the other components that make up XP seems deficient.An
image guarantees that everything (Disk data,Apps) are sync'd
properly.

OTOH, an image would be utterly useless if you knew there was a bad
registry thing you wanted to fix, but other changes made since the
image that you wanted to retain.

If you could browse the image so you could pick out the registry, that
would be useful; else not.

------------------------ ---- --- -- - - - -

Forget http://cquirke.blogspot.com and check out a
better one at http://topicdrift.blogspot.com instead!

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Sun, 19 Jun 2005 23:32:34 -0400, "Richard Urban"

I have to wonder why Microsoft changed that. Having various dates to go back
to was nice. It's not like today's hard drive could not accommodate at least
3-4 full registry backups. It would be nice to have a choice again of "last
known good"!

They didn't change it; they never had it.

Remember, Win9x and NT are two separate product teams, with NT the
"better" OS. That inclines the NT team to be dismissive of anything
the Win9x team might do, on a NIH (Not Invented Herre) basis.

The consequences of this run deep.

NT split off the common track in the MS-DOS 5 era, and was initially
developed by a somewhat "outside" team, led by one who came in from
some sort of mainframe or minicomputer OS dev (I forget the details,
but AFICR it was a man called Cutler from VAX or VM).

That's why parts of XP have such a stone-age feel to them, such as
ChkDsk. It's as if PC Tools, Norton Utilities and Scandisk never
happened. The pathetic registry fallback system is just another
example of a missed opportunity to learn from the Win9x team.

------------ ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

I swear to god i must be the only true

 

[_RR]

IMO, using ERUNT is the best way to backup the registry.

Any recommended programs for monitoring changes to the registry? I'd
like to keep track of what program installs/de-installs are doing.
(Most of them seem to leave a lot of trash in the registry even after
uninstalling)

 

[Wesley Vogel]

I don't know of any.

Make a backup with ERUNT before installing any program, then use the backup
after uninstalling that program.

That sounded good on paper, as it were, but it doesn't take into account any
other changes you may have made.

I did do a search though. I haven't used any of these.

Sysinternals Freeware - Regmon
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Regmon.html

Active Registry Monitor
http://www.protect-me.com/arm/

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=&...s_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=images

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In

 

[_RR]

[re detecting registry changes]

I don't know of any.

Make a backup with ERUNT before installing any program, then use the backup
after uninstalling that program.

I want to see which reg keys are altered, so naturally I tried
exporting the entire registry to a text file before and after and
doing a 'diff' but there are lots of MRU (most-recently-used) and
other keys that give false triggers. I figured that someone has
written a program that knows which hives to monitor.

That sounded good on paper, as it were, but it doesn't take into account any
other changes you may have made.

I did do a search though. I haven't used any of these.

Sysinternals Freeware - Regmon
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Regmon.html

Active Registry Monitor
http://www.protect-me.com/arm/

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=&...s_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=images

Thanks for the links. I didn't know there was a Sysinternals program.
That should be good. I'll check both.

 

[Wesley Vogel]

Have fun.

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In

[re detecting registry changes]

I don't know of any.

Make a backup with ERUNT before installing any program, then use the
backup after uninstalling that program.

I want to see which reg keys are altered, so naturally I tried
exporting the entire registry to a text file before and after and
doing a 'diff' but there are lots of MRU (most-recently-used) and
other keys that give false triggers. I figured that someone has
written a program that knows which hives to monitor.

That sounded good on paper, as it were, but it doesn't take into account
any other changes you may have made.

I did do a search though. I haven't used any of these.

Sysinternals Freeware - Regmon
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Regmon.html

Active Registry Monitor
http://www.protect-me.com/arm/

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=&...s_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=images

Thanks for the links. I didn't know there was a Sysinternals program.
That should be good. I'll check both.

 

[frodo]

http://the7thlab.mybesthost.com/#h_regshot