The following tips all deal with editing the Windows Registry. Please make sure to backup your registry as per tip #81 before attempting any of these, in case you type the wrong thing by accident. Making accidental changes to the registry can mess up your Windows installation very easily. Be careful, and have fun!

81. Backing up and restoring the windows registry

This is an important tip for preserving your system, and an essential introduction to this section of tips. The Windows registry is the central data store for the Windows operating system. It contains all the information and variables that Windows uses to run itself and the programs you install. Editing the registry gives access to a wealth of options that may not be offered to you through the user interface. It also gives you the means to completely mess up your system in the time it takes to reboot.

While restoring a computer with registry problems is now a fair bit more possible thanks to the system restore features built into Windows XP, it's still a good idea to make a backup of your registry before making any changes to it.

To back up the registry, open REGEDIT and ensure that 'my computer' is highlighted, then go to file\export.

In this window, you need to enter a location to save the exported registry (as a single file) and choose the type of file to create. Also, check the 'all' button at the bottom of the screen to backup the entire registry.

There are several possible file types, but we will focus on one only, as the .reg file type is the easiest to use. A .reg backup will copy over all changes made to existing portions of the registry when it is restored, while leaving additions to the registry made since the backup untouched.

Select the .reg file type and click 'save.'

Restoring the registry from this .reg file is a simple matter of locating the file you created, right clicking it and selecting 'merge.'