Backing up and Restoring Windows NT2000XP Registries Manually

Backing up and Restoring Windows NT/2000/XP Registries Manually

If the boot partition of Windows NT/2000/XP is formatted using the FAT file system, you can easily backup the system registry manually by booting the computer under an alternative operating system (for example, MS-DOS or Windows 95/98) or even using the boot diskette. When this is done, you'll be able to copy registry hive files to the backup media using any method of copying (for example, you may use both Windows Explorer and the command line).

If the Windows NT 4.0/Windows 2000/Windows XP boot partition uses NTFS, you may have some difficulties using this method of backing up the registry (however, contrary to information provided by some sources, this isn't always the case). Sometimes you may need to format the Windows NT/2000 boot disk using NTFS (this may be required by the security rules adopted by your organization, or by certain software products which need to be installed on NTFS partitions). However, you may wish to continue using a manual method of backing up the registry. The simplest method of avoiding any possible problems is a parallel installation of Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000/XP. Microsoft officially recommends this method of improving system reliability. This tip can be found in both the Windows NT Resource Kit documentation and in Microsoft Knowledge Base articles. If you follow this recommendation, though, you'll need to consider the compatibility aspects of NTFS 4 and NTFS 5. You can also use shareware or freeware NTFS drivers, which can be downloaded from the Internet).

To backup Windows NT/2000/XP registry manually, copy the files contained in the %SystemRoot%\System32\Config folder to the backup media. Note that you need to use backup media of sufficient capacity since the contents of this folder probably won't fit on a 1.44 MB diskette.

The files that need to be copied from the %SystemRoot%\System32\Config folder are listed below:

Appevent.evt	Secevent.evt	Sysevent.evt
Default	Security	System
Default.log	Security.log	System.alt[*]
Default.sav	Software	System.log
Sam	Software.log	System.sav
Sam.log	Software.sav	Userdiff
[*]This file was eliminated in Windows XP. It is only present in earlier versions of Windows NT/2000.

Restoring the registry from a backup copy that was created using this method requires booting the computer under an alternative operating system. After rebooting, you simply need to copy the registry files from the backup media back to the %SystemRoot%\System32\Config folder.