B.Hagen asked: > >If I back up my registry using this tool,
ERUNT,>
http://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/erunt/And have it copied to
CD, will the registry be totally
restored
Fom the Read Me file in Erunt
Restoring the registry with ERDNT
---------------------------------
Now the worst case has happened, and your Windows NT/2000/XP will
not even boot anymore! You have tried the different "F8" recovery
options at startup (did not help), your Emergency Disk is hopelessly
outdated, and now you're stumped - BUT - you have backed up your
registry yesterday with ERUNT!
No?? Then why are you reading this???
Well, let's get serious. If you are able to start the computer in
fail-safe mode, then do so and run the ERDNT program from your restore
folder.
If you are NOT able to get Windows running at all, BUT have multiple
OSes installed on your computer, then boot to another OS supported
by ERDNT (MS-DOS, Windows 9x/Me/NT/2000/XP) and run ERDNT from there.
Of course, the OS where ERDNT is run in must support the file system
of the partition with the NT installation to restore. Therefore I
strongly recommend that at least the partition where your OS resides
be FAT32 (unless you have a good reason to use NTFS), as it makes
things much easier in case of an emergency. For example, MS-DOS and
Windows 9x/Me do NOT have native support for NTFS drives, but you can
obtain utilities from
www.winternals.com which add NTFS support for
these OSes. (The read/write versions are not free, however.)
Generally speaking: If you are able to access the drive(s) containing
the NT installation to restore, you are able to restore the registry
with ERDNT. Note that if any drive letters have changed (for example,
the volume with your NT installation is now available as D: instead of
C
, then you MUST edit the ERDNT.INF file in your restore folder
before you run ERDNT, to reflect the new drive letters! In this
example, you would change all C:\... references to D:\... .
If you have no other OS installed, but have a DOS boot disk which
supports the file system of the NT partition, then boot to DOS, go
to the restore folder on your partition and run ERDNT. If you have no
such boot disk, you could place the hard disk in another computer with
a working OS, and run ERDNT from there.
(Hint for advanced users: To restore the registry from outside
Windows, you don't even need to use the ERDNT program. Given access
to the appropriate folders, the saved files can simply be copied back
to their original location, for example by using the Windows Recovery
Console).
Now that you have run the ERDNT program, select the restoration
options (see "Backing up the registry with ERUNT"), select if you want
to create backups of the current registry files, then click OK to
start restoration.
Note: In restoration mode "NT" backups of the current registry files
are automatically created, so that option is grayed out. In
restoration mode "File copy" all saved user registries are
automatically restored, so you cannot choose between "current user"
and "other user" registries.
(Technical information:
ERDNT knows two restoration modes. The right mode is usually auto-
detected each time you run ERDNT, but read on if you are experiencing
problems restoring the registry.
"NT" mode is used if you run the ERDNT program from within the same
system where you made the backup. This is determined by looking at the
[SystemRoot] entry in the ERDNT.INF file and comparing it to the
actual %SystemRoot% system variable. Using "NT" mode is the only way
to successfully restore the active registry of the currently running
OS.
"File copy" mode is used if the currently running OS is NOT NT-based,
or if the [SystemRoot] entry does not match the %SystemRoot% variable.
In this mode the backed up registry files are simply copied back to
their original location.
MS-DOS based ERDNT only supports "File copy" mode.)
ERDNT command line switches
---------------------------
The ERDNT program also supports command line switches for "silent"
operation. The syntax for the ERDNT command line is:
ERDNT silent [sysreg] [curuser] [otherusers]
[/mode:nt|filecopy] [/nobackup] [/noprogresswindow] [/reboot]
(Switches in brackets are optional.)
Description of the command line switches:
silent
Puts ERDNT into "silent" mode and enables all other switches.
sysreg
Restore the system registry
curuser *
Restore the current user registry
(This option is ignored in "File copy" restoration mode.)
otherusers
Restore other saved user registries
(Note: If none of the three above options is given on the command
line, ERDNT automatically uses the default restoration options, system
and current user registry.)
/mode:nt or /mode:filecopy *
Disables automatic detection of the correct restoration mode and
uses mode "NT" oder "File copy" instead.
/nobackup
Don't make backups of the current registry files during restoration.
(This switch is ignored in "NT" restoration mode.)
/noprogresswindow
Hides the progress window during restoration.
/reboot *
Automatically reboots the computer when restoration of the registry
is complete.
* = Not supported in the DOS version of ERDNT.
Troubleshooting
---------------
In MS-DOS, path names are only allowed to have a maximum of 79
characters. If you are running the MS-DOS ERDNT program and get error
messages restoring the user registries, it may be because the path
name of the file to restore is too long. Unfortunately, with Windows
2000 and XP user registry paths like
C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\APPLIC~1\MICROS~1\WINDOWS are quite
common, so this limit is easily reached. Your only choice is then
running the program from within Windows. You can try to restore only
the system registry, see if Windows boots up again correctly, and then
re-run ERDNT from there to restore the user registries.
Some systems will generate the error message "Cannot find file
'E:\Registry Backup\ERDNT.EXE' (or one of its components)" when
ERDNT.EXE is run from a path where one or more folder names contain
spaces. This is a bug in Windows, and the easiest workaround is to use
folder names without spaces.
