Windows Registry can be changed at any time and all the articles you write will tell you to keep up the backup first. Let us study about how to make this happen and it is not as simple as you think. Like any other file you can’t backup and Restore the registry and it is obvious that it can’t be modified by hands. Also file itself can’t be copied or replaced at least not while running Windows and full backup of registry cannot be restored from an export file either.
What is the Registry?
It is a hierarchical database that contains all the settings and configurations that are used by services, components, applications and everything in Windows. There are two basic concepts of registry, one is keys and other is Values. Basically objects such as folders are called as registry Keys and it looks like folders in the interface. Whereas Values are bit like the files in the folders and that contains all actual settings.
Restoring Sections and Backing up of the Windows Registry:
You need to know how to backup and restore sections of the registry and the sessions that might be editing. Obviously the process is quite simple and it will work well in all times. The sections of the registry can be backed up that all deal with application settings. All the applications will not store their settings in the registry.
For those that store the settings, you just need to save settings to backup file using this technique. In order to backup the section of the registry, you just need to right click on the key on the left hand pane and you should choose Export from the Menu and then need to save the file with a name that you can recognize easily. Mostly it is saved as HKCR star.reg. After doing this, you can go ahead and change whatever you need to do.
Now let’s study about how to restore the backup; it is quite simple, double click on the icon and choose it to restore the information in to the registry. This technique is same to registry anything you like to backup. But you cannot use the same technique in order to restore the entire registry. Deleting the whole registry will lead to break of things