Restoring to an eariler successful Boot Date in XP

[Jamess B. Holladay]

Is there any way to restore the registry in XP as there was in Win98SE, i.e.
in Win98 you could run "scanreg /restore" then hit enter to select a restore
date. This command in Win98 actually worked and you could select what
successful boot date you wanted to restore to. It was not just rolling back
or System File Checking, which Win98 also had.
If there is a command for doing this in WinXP would someone please share it
with me.

 

[Malke]

Is there any way to restore the registry in XP as there was in
Win98SE, i.e. in Win98 you could run "scanreg /restore" then hit enter
to select a restore date. This command in Win98 actually worked and
you could select what successful boot date you wanted to restore to.
It was not just rolling back or System File Checking, which Win98 also
had. If there is a command for doing this in WinXP would someone
please share it with me.

Actually scanreg /restore was iffy in Win98. You were fortunate if it
worked for you. And it was in effect "rolling back" because it replaced
the registry with an earlier one.

Windows XP has the System Restore function which works quite well to
roll back short-term mistakes. I wouldn't go back more than a week or
two - a few days is much better.

Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>System Restore
"Restore my computer to an earlier time"

MVP Bert Kinney's site about System Restore - http://bertk.mvps.org

If you are unable to get into Regular Mode to run System Restore, you
can run it from Safe Mode and also from Safe Mode Command Line.

I've approached your question as if you are just asking for general
information. If you want help in solving a specific problem, please
post back with full details of the issue and your system.

Malke

 

[Dave Cohen]

Is there any way to restore the registry in XP as there was in Win98SE, i.e.
in Win98 you could run "scanreg /restore" then hit enter to select a restore
date. This command in Win98 actually worked and you could select what
successful boot date you wanted to restore to. It was not just rolling back
or System File Checking, which Win98 also had.
If there is a command for doing this in WinXP would someone please share it
with me.

winxp uses system restore, that will restore more than just the
registry. One way to access it is programs/accessories/system tools.
It's fairly intuitive to use.
Dave Cohen

 

[Jamess B. Holladay]

I always had good success with the Win98 Scanreg restore. It seemed store
earlier boot successes without operator intervention, i.e. in WinXP many
times you find restore has been turned off to save space and there is
nothing to restore. With Win98 the backups happened and you almost could not
stop them. I guest I am wondering if there is a deeper oriented backup than
System Restore? It it exist how do you get to it?

 

[Malke]

I always had good success with the Win98 Scanreg restore. It seemed
store earlier boot successes without operator intervention, i.e. in
WinXP many times you find restore has been turned off to save space
and there is nothing to restore. With Win98 the backups happened and
you almost could not stop them. I guest I am wondering if there is a
deeper oriented backup than System Restore? It it exist how do you get
to it?

Then as I said, you were fortunate. XP's System Restore does not turn
off magically by itself. System Restore, however, is no substitute for
proper backups.

If you want to be able to restore your computer completely, use imaging
software such as Acronis True Image. Continue to back up data by
copying to another hard drive, external media, and burning to cd/dvd.

Malke

 

[Bert Kinney]

Hi James,

For the future, here's a utility for backing up the registry only.

Erunt - Registry Backup & Restore/Compact Utility
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/

Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member: http://dts-l.org

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I always had good success with the Win98 Scanreg restore. It seemed
store earlier boot successes without operator intervention, i.e. in
WinXP many times you find restore has been turned off to save space
and there is nothing to restore.

If you turn off an important safeguard like System Restore, and then find
that you need it, you have nobody to blame but yourself. It's a very useful
tool, one that has often gotten me and many others out of trouble.

With Win98 the backups happened and
you almost could not stop them. I guest I am wondering if there is a
deeper oriented backup than System Restore? It it exist how do you
get to it?

That's Windows XP's method, and it works very well. Nothing "deeper
oriented" is needed. Just don't turn it off (but it's normally good to lower
the amount of disk space it uses from its overly-large default of 12% of the
drive to around 2GB.

 

[Jamess B. Holladay]

Many thanks, this is very constructive.
It helps to have utilities like this. Occasionally when volunteering at the
Senior Center I find all sorts of problems with their computers. Usually
simple but not always.
As a volunteer time is precious.
Thanks again.

 

[Bert Kinney]

You're very welcome James.

Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member: http://dts-l.org

 

[Rock]

I always had good success with the Win98 Scanreg restore. It seemed store
earlier boot successes without operator intervention, i.e. in WinXP many
times you find restore has been turned off to save space and there is
nothing to restore. With Win98 the backups happened and you almost could
not
stop them. I guest I am wondering if there is a deeper oriented backup
than
System Restore? It it exist how do you get to it?

As others have said there is no other utility in XP that saves copies of the
registry on an automatic basis. That is part of the the function of System
Restore. SR actually is unobtrusive, and for the most part works pretty
well for it's intended purpose. See this link for info on it:
http://bertk.mvps.org/index.html

System restore only get's turned off if someone turns it off, so it's up to
the system operator. If you want something else, there is ntbackup which is
installed with XP Pro (though some OEM installs might not include it). For
XP Home it' not installed by default but can be located on the XP Home
installation CD. It does data and system backup including the capacity to
backup the registry. Frankly I don't care for ntbackup and don't use it -
nor am I certain you can (easily or at all) restore just the registry with
it. There are good 3rd party backup solutions such as a disk imaging
programs which can save a compressed image of the hard drive or a partition
and restore the same. Good for more than just restoring the registry.

There is a good 3rd party, free utility to backup the registry. The
registry can be restored from the recovery console. It's called ERUNT.

ERUNT
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/erunt.txt

Installing and Using ERUNT
http://www.silentrunners.org/sr_eruntuse.html
http://www.winxptutor.com/regback.htm