On Wed, 10 May 2006 08:58:02 -0700, Ed Ireland
Assuming that Restore Points exist in XP, is there any value to the files in
Windows\Repair?
Maybe. SR and pure registry backup are both useful for different
things, and if you disable SR in XP, you lose pure registry backup.
XP is useless at maintaining pure registry backups, compared to
"inferior" Win9x. Here's how they compare on this topic...
Win95
- creates initial system registry backup as SYSTEM.1ST
- keeps last good backup of full registry as *.DA0
- updates *.DA0 after every "successful" boot
Experience showed some weaknesses in the above, in that sometimes a
"successful" boot would crash after updating the .DA0, so that the
..DA0 were just as likely to crash as the original registry.
Also, RAM errors would often lead the OS to believe the registry was
corrupted, and the OS would then delete a perfectly good registry and
fall back to the backup, causing needless colateral damage.
Win98
- creates initial system registry backup as SYSTEM.1ST
- keeps the last 5 full registry backups in RB*.CAB archives
- AFAIK, updates the RB*.CAB on first boot of a new day
- if falls back to last-good, keeps current registry as RBBAD.CAB
- allows extra files to be included in automated RB*.CAB backups
WinME
- as above, but new hive file CLASSES.DAT included
- an initial CLASSES.1ST added to SYSTEM.1ST
Now let's see what XP offers...
- initial registry backed up as *.SAV
- initial registry also backed up in \Repair
- however, the above are NOT kept updated
- 1-shot "last good" backup a la Win95 is partial only
- this "last good" is stored in same hive as the "live" one
Pretty useless, if a registry hive file gets corrupted and you can't
pick out a replacement from the SR subtree (which is difficult at
best, and impossible if SR's disabled or purged).
If so, is there a process for updating them?
Add ERUNT to replace what XP hasn't learned to provide.
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Tip Of The Day:
To disable the 'Tip of the Day' feature...
