The Windows\Repair files

[Paul D B]

Hi all,

After some troubles getting my PC back alive I'd like to understand and
ask a few things regarding the windows\repair folder.

As I understand it contains copies of 5 important registry related files
(sam, security, software, default, system) that reside in
c:\windows\system32\config. These copies are created at the time of
the Setup of XP.

So, they are (in my case) quite unusable to get my system back alive in
case of a corrupted registry - as I found out the hard way. The reason
is that 1 year after installing XP, I made some drastic changes to my
hardware, such as installing a RAID adapter. The copies of my registry
in \windows\repair don't know about this.
Luckily I had a recent Norton Ghost image of my PC in which I also had
the 5 files and I used them to get the PC back alive.

Anyway, there is also a subfolder \windows\repair\regback in which there
are again copies of these 5 files (sam, security, software, default,
system) and those are more recent. But not "very" recent neither!

How and during which process are these copies made? And how can I force
this?

In Windows 2000 there was in the Backup-tool a "Recovery disk" option
and I know that it made copies of the registry files into that
\windows\repair\regback folder.
But how can I do this in XP?

I've tried to copy the files manually to a safe place... I can't because
they are "in use".

Can someone give me some clues?

TIA

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

Those aren't "registry related" files, those files *are* the registry. The
backups in the \repair folder are created when the system is first
installed, and are a last resort if nothing else works. There is a much
safer way of backing up and restoring the WinXP registry, search google.com
on erunt to download, here are the details:
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/erunt.txt


--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Paul D B]

Hi,

Those aren't "registry related" files, those files *are* the
registry. The backups in the \repair folder are created when the
system is first installed, and are a last resort if nothing else
works. There is a much safer way of backing up and restoring the
WinXP registry, search google.com on erunt to download, here are the
details: http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/erunt.txt

Thanks Rick. Great link, I have been looking for such a tool for a long
time (ages ago I used ERU quite often .... ).

It's hard to understand why MS doesn't provide such a tool.

But this still leaves my question unanswered: when are the files in
repair\regback created?

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

There is no default \regback folder in WinXP, it's either a leftover from a
Win2K upgrade or was created by some other utility. WinXP only uses the
\repair directory. No idea why MS doesn't provide for better registry
backups in XP, at least Win9x created regular backups with the scanreg
utility. Most people I know rely on the erunt utility as a solution.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Paul D B]

Hi,

There is no default \regback folder in WinXP, it's either a leftover
from a Win2K upgrade or was created by some other utility. WinXP only
uses the \repair directory. No idea why MS doesn't provide for better
registry backups in XP, at least Win9x created regular backups with
the scanreg utility. Most people I know rely on the erunt utility as
a solution.

Rick,

each and every PC in our network has that regback folder and none of
them have been upgraded from W2K.
The folders are dated Oct 2004 while the original XP install dates from
Feb 2003.
I did some detective work here and October 2004 was when we upgraded
XP-SP1 to XP-SP2.

So I'm quite sure the repair\regback is created by XP-SP2 setup.

Meanwhile I've installed Erunt and it is working great.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi Paul,

Curious then, as I've got 6 XP installations sitting in front of me and none
of them have that folder, nor can I recall seeing one on any that I've
worked on recently. They are all a mix of upgrades and clean installations.
Nor can I find any mention of a regback folder in the MSKB articles in
relation to an XP installation, only on NT4 and Win2K. I would suspect that
perhaps your network folks that pushed out the SP2 upgrade created that
folder as a fallback point if one of the SP2 installs failed (and chose it
precisely because it would be familiar had they previously worked on early
NT systems), it would certainly seem like a logical thing to do.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Paul D B]

Hi Paul,

Curious then, as I've got 6 XP installations sitting in front of me
and none of them have that folder, nor can I recall seeing one on any
that I've worked on recently. They are all a mix of upgrades and
clean installations. Nor can I find any mention of a regback folder
in the MSKB articles in relation to an XP installation, only on NT4
and Win2K. I would suspect that perhaps your network folks that
pushed out the SP2 upgrade created that folder as a fallback point if
one of the SP2 installs failed (and chose it precisely because it
would be familiar had they previously worked on early NT systems), it
would certainly seem like a logical thing to do.

nope... because I am the network guy here that did the SP2 upgrades

I've checked +/- 20 PC's and they all have got the folder. 4 PC's don't
and those are all machines that were bought in 2005(and probably came
with the XP-SP2 preloaded).

But, on my own PC, I've installed SP2 on 6th Oct 2004, and the Regback
folder is dated 15th of Nov 2004 !
So, there seems no relationship between them. I may have concluded too
quick that it was an XP2-related folder.

Humm... what non-MS application would use a typical MS folder for that
purpose? Because the folder exists in W2K as you know.

OK, I'll look into it again. .

 

[Paul D B]

Humm... what non-MS application would use a typical MS folder for
that purpose? Because the folder exists in W2K as you know.

OK, I'll look into it again. .

Apparantly, running NTBackup on XP-Pro and doing a System State backup,
places a backup copie of the registry hives in that
windows\repair\regback folder....

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Ahh, I think I see the answer here, it's the ERD tool in Ntbackup that
creates these. I never use it (ntbackup), as erunt is far more versatile for
registry backups, and I use imaging to backup systems I work on.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Stan Brown]

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 07:43:49 -0500 from Rick "Nutcase" Rogers

No idea why MS doesn't provide for better registry
backups in XP, at least Win9x created regular backups with the scanreg
utility. Most people I know rely on the erunt utility as a solution.

What's wrong with System Restore for this purpose? I know it saves
more than just the registry, but IIRC it does save the registry.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

While that's not a bad idea, I've found that System Restore is not as
reliable as I'd like it to be. It's not bad, but you also have to count on
the machine being able to load into the OS in order to use it.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Stan Brown]

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 14:28:45 -0500 from Rick "Nutcase" Rogers

While that's not a bad idea, I've found that System Restore is not as
reliable as I'd like it to be. It's not bad, but you also have to count on
the machine being able to load into the OS in order to use it.

A valid point. I figure I'm covered by making frequent backups. I
also use Bert Kinney's technique to test System Restore periodically.
Thus System Restore is unlikely to fail on me, but if it does I have
the option of going to the previous day's backup.

Hmm ... I have a batch file that does a DIR of every drive, in
particular format that I then use for other programs. I could add a
call to ERUNT to that batch file, I bet. Space is not tight on my
disk.

 

[Paul D B]

System Restore can only be used if you are still able to boot into
Windows XP.
If the registry is corrupted, as I recently experienced, System restore
will NOT help you.
You get "Windows Could Not Start Because the
C:\windows\system32\config\system File is Missing or Corrupt"
and that's it. You're into deep shit then and you're gone for half an
hour of messing around with the command prompt in the recovery console.

basically, you have to:
1) replace the registry files in c:\windows\system32\config with the
copies that XP made when it was installed for the first time (they are
located in c:\windows\repair)
2) with some luck you can boot into XP again... XP as it was when you
installed your PC!
3) and this "new" registry does not know about your System Restore
points so before you can restore them, you have got to go through quite
some steps to get to the system restore points from the c:\System Volume
Information folder

If you have made big hardware changes to you system after the initial
Windows setup, such as installing hard drives that need special drivers
(raid or scsi) then you will not be able to boot your PC after step 1.
Catch 22.

It is dazzling that MS has gone through all the trouble creating System
Restore in XP, which is basically a good thing, and not provided a
simple way to restore a "point" from withing the Recovery Console.

Anyway, ERUNT seems to be the perfect tool for the job.