Registry backup

[Felecha]

Trying to figure out this business of registry backup.

Windows itself offers cfgback.exe, for backup and restore, which I tried months ago and led to the only complete crash I've ever had, it was gonzo - reformat. Later I read somewhere that cfgback has problems. Yup.

Then Regedit gives you the option to Export, which I tried recently, just to see what is what, figuring that wouldn't be too scary, and the whole thing froze up, what to speak of my heart. Still, I rebooted and it came up breathing.

Then there's ERU, which is supposed to work better. I used that to make a recovery set on my Jaz drive. It did its thing, but I'm not clear what I'd do with it if I had to recover.

I've got Norton System Works, which offers Norton Utilities' Registry Tracker which is supposed to take snapshots for me. Will this give me a copy I can find for a recovery?

I've seen on Bulletin Boards like this one, people telling other people to back it up, and how to do it "manually", but I'm not knowledgeable enough in terminolgy or technique to really trust following instructions that I don't feel I understand what they mean for the machine.

The rescue disks that W95 and Norton make for you have a registry backup, if I understand correctly, but with ongoing changes I can see you'd want the most up-to-date version of the Registry.

Then I just learned that every time I boot W95 makes a backup under system.da0 of the successful registry settings. Why couldn't I just use that? Although at the latter stages of my crash in January, I tried what the Help said about restoring from .da0, and it didn't work.

So, anyone got the best way to do it and a clear instruction of how to use the backup if needed? I'm afraid the Norton stuff doesn't make me feel like it explains it sufficiently. I'd like to know what I'm doing rather than just shrugging and letting it all be done behind the scenes.

Thanks to anyone.

F

[winpad98]

When you are dealing with ERU, you want to make sure you can start your computer from your Jaz drive. If not, you will want to have a startup disk with drivers to read the Jaz drive. When you launch the startup disk, change to your Jaz drive by using cd x: where x is your Jaz drive's letter. Then, run ERD.exe.

I would recommend upgrading to Windows 98. Windows 98 maintains five registry backups and checks the registry for integrity and corruption often. You can configure Win 98 to maintain up to 99 registry backups! If you are worried about bugs, don't worry, because Windows 98 Second Edition will launch soon, and it will contain all the latest bug fixes.

As for cfgback.exe, thank goodness I never used it to restore my registry. With your Export Registry thing, the registry is really big, and it may appear frozen, but it is working to export all that registry data to a text file, and depending on the speed of your computer, it takes up to a minute. If you were to restore that registry later, you would restart in Safe Mode Command Prompt Only and use command line Regedit to import the backup copy.

However, Windows 98's Registry Checker is the easiest solution.



Regards,
Jared Smith

[Felecha]

Thanks for the reply. This is slowly coming together for me.

By the way, when Regedit froze on me at Export, I waited over 5 minutes before bailing out. Control-Alt-Delete didn't work, so I pressed the Restart button on the computer itself. Good exercise for the heart muscles.

Anyway, can I see if I've got this straight? My friends who know these things grew up on DOS and doing things by hand. I came in with W95, like learning to drive a car with no idea of how it works.

The whole point of backup is to prepare for the needs of a recovery, nespah? And the idea with a recovery is that things are bad, and you start out by feeding in what your machine needs from a floppy. If the floppy drive works, it will be able to load in correct information from the floppy disk -- instructions for the computer to wake up and go to work, since its own onboard instructions are either lost or screwed up. And a recovery disk should have the tools you need to straighten things out once you get in the door. That would include a copy of Regedit for finding and restoring a good registry. And now I'm realizing -- oh yeah, like you said, the ERD is no good to me if I can't get into the Jaz drive to get it. So a recovery set would have to include that sort thing. I ask it this way because I'm frankly confused -- I'm a rookie. I've been comparing the contents of the several recovery sets I have made at times. Norton Utilities' Emergency Disks don't have exactly the same things on them as the disk that W95 made for me. And Norton AntiVirus made me a set that was different (I do understand the circumstance there would be different). And when I had my New Year's crash, a dear friend brought his laptop and created a Miracle Disk that got me going again, custom crafting it out his experience with what was needed, because the W95 disk didn't work. The contents of that disk are again somewhat different. And I'm quite fuzzy as to what tasks all those items on the floppies are doing.

If I tried to explain a carburetor to someone who didn't have any idea of internal combustion engines, with a cylinder needing an intake of atomized fuel, a lot of my explanation would go by him. I'm like that at this point. I've been reading the W95 Resource Kit and trying to piece some things together, but it's slow going (but fun -- what a challenge!). Is there a site that has like a primer on all this? I'm not a complete rookie, but I get lost in the Resource Kit. I'd like a basic layout of the workings of the computer and of W95. Not how to launch a program or copy a file or resize a window, but the kind of info that would help me understand the boot process (to take a topic for now).

I poke around several bulletin boards, and I've learned tons this way, but it's a piece here and a piece there, and often I want o ask -- is there somewhere I can go to get more of the overall ideas here, so I can take better advantage of what I'm told here and there?

Thanks for any tips. And I went to your site. Nice.

F

[winpad98]

First and foremost, thanks for visiting my site! I take great pride in my work there.

As for the Win 95 Startup Disk, yes, it includes a copy of the Regedit program that can restore an exported registry.

And if it was unresponsive for five minutes, it had to have crashed! And yes, every time I get errors or crashes like that, my heart starts pounding. I don't want a fatal exception error trashing everything.

A Windows 95 Startup Disk contains the boot files (io.sys, msdos.sys, command.com), the Scandisk program for testing the integrity of a hard drive, the Regedit program for registry surgery out of Windows, and a few other utilities people don't really use (Debug, CHKDSK, etc.)

Believe it or not, you can run the Emergency Recovery Utility to save files to a special directory on your hard drive. So the next time your registry gets corrupted, you can start in Safe Mode Command Prompt Only, and run the ERD command from that directory. That will bypass the registry and restore it.

Norton Utilities' emergency disks contain a backup of the boot files, the configuration files, and DOS-based versions of its Disk Doctor program and a few other goodies. Norton AntiVirus made a bootable floppy to help clean the system when Windows was corrupted by a virus.

There are major complaints about the Windows 95 startup disk. And again I reiterate: Windows 98 is better for this task. Windows 98 is able to hold a lot more in the way of utilities, such as the DOS-based Scanreg program.

As for the Windows 95 Resource Kit, the registry information is very vague and brief, and doesn't cover as much as many would like. It is really for those who plan on deploying Windows throughout an organization.

I would recommend picking up a copy of The Windows 95 Registry for Dummies. The Dummies series is a great thing for beginners, and you seem to be interested in how this whole thing works. The Windows 95 Registry for Dummies will help you learn a lot about the errors it can generate and how to repair them. It also gives tips on backing up the registry. A book that gives advanced information on troubleshooting techniques and backup/restore is available for buying from this site. It is called "The Windows 98 Registry: A Survival Guide for Users," and is recommended only when you feel comfortable with this OS.

If I can be of any more assistance to you, feel free to ask.





Regards,
Jared Smith

[Anonymous]

If you're dealing with registry corruption problem, then here is my "brief" explanation of backing up and restoring Windows registry files:

1. Create a new "batch" file on your desktop (New > Text Document) and give it a name like "RegBack.BAT" (with bat as file extension.)

2. Open the file (RIGHT click > Edit) and key in these lines:

@echo off
c:
cd %winbootdir%
attrib -s -h -r user.dat
attrib -s -h -r system.dat
md regback
cd regback
md bk1
md bk2
md bk3
md bk4
md bk5
copy bk4\*.dat bk5
copy bk3\*.dat bk4
copy bk2\*.dat bk3
copy bk1\*.dat bk2
copy *.dat bk1
cd ..
copy user.dat regback
copy system.dat regback
attrib +r +h +s user.dat
attrib +r +h +s system.dat

3. Everytime before you shutting down your pc, run the file.

4. Create a "ResReg.bat" at c:\ (My Computer > C: > New > Text Document) and put in these lines:

@echo off
c:
cd %winbootdir%
if "%1"=="" goto NoParameter
if %1==0 copy regback\*.dat
if %1==1 copy regback\bk1\*.dat
if %1==2 copy regback\bk2\*.dat
if %1==3 copy regback\bk3\*.dat
if %1==4 copy regback\bk4\*.dat
if %1==5 copy regback\bk5\*.dat
Exit
:NoParameter
copy regback\*.dat

5. If your Windows gives you registry corruption error when it's booting up later, reboot to go to dos prompt (Reboot > F8 > 6. Dos prompt only.) and run ResReg.bat (c:\ResReg.bat). Try to enter Windows (win). If Windows can't boot with latest registry backup, try "c:\resreg 1", "c:\resreg 2", "c:\resreg 3", "c:\resreg 4" and finally "c:\resreg 5" in order. Try to enter Windows after each restore.

6. If you're so unlucky to enter Windows by this way (!!!) try this in dos prompt after reboot:

cd c:\windows
regedit /e regfull
regedit /c regfull
win

If the two regedit commands (first one is "exporting" full registry to a file called "regfull" and second one is importing from it) did not give you any error message, you should be able (99.9%?) to enter Windows with no "registry corruption" error.

If you failed the last solution, reinstall Win95 over the old one may help in repairing the corrupted registry files. If still of no avail, then deltree "c:\windows" and "c:\program file" (c:\progra~1) and install a completely fresh Windows. Formatting harddisk is not necessary for reinstalling a new Windows.

Hope it helps your "registry" restoring question.

P/S: if your registry crashes too often (twice a week maybe?) you're not taking good care of your Windows. You might be installing and uninstalling lots of software and leaving behind problematic registry entries. Use decent uninstaller such as EasyClean (www.bkedv.de) to completely uninstall registry entries made by software installations. Good Luck!

[Felecha]

Actually I have not had lots of trouble with Reggie lately. My current interest in this and other topics concerning the internal workings of the computer and Windows comes from the Great New Year's Eve Crash.

I had been having lots of crashes in my browsing. Several times an hour I was getting Kernel32DLL IPF's requiring complete reboots and Scandisk to get back in (I've since disarmed the automatic Scandisk and have scheduled Norton Disk Doctor once a week -- ScanDisk never found any errors anyway when it did that). One of the suggestions I was getting was that there was extra crap all over the Reg from two years of uninstalling, etc, with Add-Remove Programs, and something was maybe corrupted. When I started on the net I used to download all sorts of stupid free utilities and whizbang things, and then chuck them. So I got out an old copy of CleanSweep I had bought when I was new, thinking I should have such a thing, and reinstalled it to clean things up, and had been told I should back up Reggie, and I found cfgback in there and used it, and then CleanSweep had a tremendous incompatibility with IE4.0, made all sorts of trouble, it was by then an old version long since updated but I didn't know that. The problems snowballed, and I was inept about it, trying this and that, and when I went to restore Reggie with cfgback, the whole show went south. I did get saved by my friends, but I came out of it wanting to know more about how things work, and what I should be doing to keep things working.

I began running SpeedDisk on a schedule, and DiskDoctor. I would run them and watch the screens and wonder what they were doing in there. I got RegClean and use it every now and again. I got scared when my brother in law got wiped out by Chernobyl, and got serious about learning about virus protection and got Norton for that. I got Norton Uninstaller Deluxe to use for uninstalling rather than A-R-P. I discovered there are lots of sites out here for Windows problems, and tweaking tips (interesting that there is such variation about certain issues) and bulletin boards, etc.

So I haven't been having lots of problems lately, but I have wanted to learn, and I admit I've become fascinated by all this. Probing these things is now a hobby.

One thing I'm wanting to do is use Norton's Registry Optimizer, thinking that will be a nice maintenance thing to do. But I am scared to turn it loose in there, and scared of playing with backups, and there seem to be so many little variations on the subject. The message from Anonymous here is a wonder to me -- what is that all about???? And what does RegClean do anyway? CleanSweep (I have a newer version, but I'm not all that confident of it) puts up a list of all the problems it thinks it found, and lets you confirm that you want it to fix them. Uninstaller Deluxe has something that looks similar. And what would the Registry Optimizer do if I used it? Would it clean out the crap and in addition reorganize the Reg in some optimal way? Some folks on the boards said they run it once a week and have no problems and never heard of any problems with it. What kind of performance boost would I get, anyway? If I did use it, I would really want to be finally confident I had the backup and recovery stuff clear.

And back to one more side question if I may. The idea of the Jaz as a backup place still intrigues me. As a rookie, just feeling light bulbs coming on, it seems to be an attractive option. I just recently finally realized what a boot disk does. Put the instructions on a floppy and stick it in and if the mechanism still physically spins and reads, off you go, if you have the right stuff on it. So I was thinking that if I had a boot disk that would get me into the Jaz, I could put all the recovery stuff I want in there. The guy who sold me the Jaz said, hey, you can back up your whole hard drive in a snap! I didn't have any idea of these things then, but it certainly has made ordinary data backup a snap, compared to the task of floppies, so easy and quick that I've gotten very good about doing it. If only flossing my teeth didn't seem like such an onerous chore!! And here it looks like I could make it very simple to do proper backing up before installs, and regularly stick the latest copy of the Registry in there, and all that stuff that super careful type people would do and I've never done like I probably should.

If that's on the right track, what would I need for booting into the Jaz? I have the idea, but don't really know what would be needed.

Thanks, Jared, I get long-winded, I know, but your replies so far have been very informative and I appreciate it.

[Paul Dyer]

I've used Cleansweep for over two years and have found no problems with it, as long as you review what it's going to remove, and don't just let it go off on its own, and also make sure that you keep it up to date from their website. General opinion over several forums I visit is that it is the best commercial uninstaller around, although I've also seen good comments about a shareware uninstaller called (from memory) EZ-Clean

[Anonymous]

You're welcome as we're helping each other here.

From what I know about Norton Utilities' Registry Optimizer, it packs registry files (system.dat and user.dat) to make them load faster. When Windows or other programs change something in the registry, the OS marks the old registry values or keys as deleted and appends the new values/keys at end of registry files. So the registry files get bigger than it actually should. Norton's Registry Optimizer packs the registry files and physically removes the old values/keys out of those files and thus making them smaller and faster in loading. It might rearrange registry keys so that adjacent keys (as what we see in regedit window) are physically adjoined.
Basically, it does these two lines under pure dos:
c:\windows\regedit /e TempFile
c:\windows\regedit /c TempFile
Registry files would be smaller after running these two lines.

Regarding Jaz, I think Iomega does provide users a dos program to recognize Jaz drive under pure dos - something similar to "Guest.exe" for Iomega Zip drive. You can use a backup software called Ghost from www.symantec.com (Norton) to backup a partition or even entire harddisk into an image file, and later restore entire partition/harddisk from the image file if necessary. Store the image file (should be 40% smaller than your actual harddisk if stored with compression) into your Jaz disk. If your harddisk has been corrupted, or you just want to restore back everything, boot from diskette and then run Ghost from your Jaz disk to restore your harddisk from image file. It does need some dos knowledge though.

As for your frequent installing and uninstalling of software, it's easy if you know how to handle harddisk's partition. Basically, harddisk partitioning is dangerous for novice and normal computer users. For me, I partitioned my harddisk into four partitions and installed Windows in three of them. I've different objectives for each partition: one for normal usage, one for testing software and one for programming. I am using special program called System Commander to choose the partition/Windows I want to boot to. So if you or your friend is able to partition your harddisk into two partitions and install the boot manager, you can use one Windows normally and the other for testing software. You can test as many software as you want, only then install those stable and useful software in your normal usage Windows.

If you don't want to take the risk of lossing all your harddisk data, you can use a decent uninstaller called EasyClean (www.bkedv.de) to track down every bit of changes made by newly installed software and even Windows itself.
I've a simple tutorial page for EasyClean at http://members.tripod.com/cyhoh/easyclean.html . Be patient while loading the page because it contains many screenshots.

[Anonymous]

EasyClean can beat CleanSweep flat!

Before I discovered EasyClean, I was a CleanSweep user after testing several commercial uninstallers including RemoveIt, Norton Uninstaller, WinDelete, Uninstaller etc.

If you don't believe me, download EasyClean from http://www.bkedv.de and test for yourself. While EasyClean can track down switching of foreground windows and maximizing/minimizing of windows, CleanSweep can't track down anything. Moreover, CleanSweep is far too weak compared with EasyClean in tracking registry and file changes made by software installations. If you haven't tried EasyClean, you won't know how weak CleanSweep is. I myself thought that CleanSweep was the most powerful and perfect uninstaller, until I found EasyClean.

[winpad98]

I don't recommend RegClean. It is a tool intended for professionals who are comfortable restoring emergency backups of the registry from the command prompt. RegClean has a history of missing more garbage than it finds, and has the capacity to cause damage in inexperienced hands.

I never used RegClean. I hear that there are good and bad experiences with it. As the car ads say, your mileage may vary.

And I don't care if your messages get long-winded. Good, clear discussions are extremely important! :-)

Regards,
Jared Smith

[Anonymous]

yep,

we developed a program for your nightmares check us out at http://members.xoom.com/RegRes99

[PatrickOBrien]

yep,

use our program http://members.xoom.com/RegRes99

Patrick O'Brien