How to Backup and Restore the Windows Registry

Whenever you make a change to the Windows Registry, you can back up the registry first. But how do you do that? Here’s how you can back up and restore a specific section or the entire registry.

What is the Windows Registry?

The Windows Registry is a database that stores all the configurations and settings used by components, services, applications, and almost everything in Windows.

The registry has two key concepts you should know: Keys and Values. Registry Keys are objects that function like folders and even appear as such in the interface. Values are similar to the files inside those folders, and they contain the actual settings.

You can’t really back up and restore the registry like an ordinary file—much of it can’t be manually modified, and the files themselves can’t be replaced or copied over, at least not while Windows is running. Also, you can’t restore a full registry backup from an export file.

Backing up and Restoring Sections of the Windows Registry

For the most part, all you need to know is how to back up and restore sections of the registry, especially the sections you might be trying to edit. Fortunately, this process is pretty simple and works quite well most of the time.

Step 1. Press Win + R and then type “regedit”, and then click on “OK”.

Step 2. To back up the part of the registry you want to edit or delete, simply right-click on the key in the left pane and select “Export” from the menu

Step 3: Save the file with a name you’ll recognize later. We will save it as Green.reg

Now you can go ahead and make whatever changes you’d like to test from underneath that key, because you have a backup file.

In our example, we delete the key named .001

Step 4: Restoring that backup is as simple as double-clicking the icon you backed up and clicking “Yes” to restore the information to the registry.

We have successfully recovered the .001 key.

You can use the same technique for anything in the registry you’d like to back up… but you can’t use this to restoring the entire registry.

Backing Up the Whole Registry to a REG File

You can absolutely make a whole copy of the registry as a REG file by exporting from the root node. To do this, right-click “Computer” in the left sidebar, and choose “Export.”

If you double-click on the registry file, you’ll see an error message letting you know that not all the entries were restored because some of the keys are open by the system, v.v.

And that’s the issue with this method of backing up the registry—it doesn’t work well for significant changes, like installing applications or anything where you might actually need to restore the entire registry. You also don’t want to keep this kind of full registry backup around for too long because there’s no way to know what changes are stored in that registry file or whether they’ll cause problems when you restore it.

However, there is a better way to backup the registry and it won’t damage your computer.

Using System Restore to Properly Back Up Your Registry

Whenever you’re planning to make significant changes to the registry, install things like drivers, or modify a lot of settings at once, it’s a good idea to create a system restore point. This will allow you to easily revert back later if needed. An added benefit is that it also creates a backup of the registry.

Step 1: Open the Start Menu, search for Create Restore Point and select the relevant option from the result that appears.

Step 2: Now you can click the “Create” button, give the restore point a descriptive name, and it will be immediately created.

Step 3: To restore from that restore point, search for Create Restore Point again in the Start Menu and click the relevant option. Click the “System Restore” option.

Step 4: In the System Restore window, click the “Next” button.

Step 5: Select the restore point you want to restore from and click “Next.”

Step 6: Click the “Finish” button to start the restoration process.

The process may take a while, depending on how much data is being restored.

Conclusion

That’s all about how you can back up and restore the Windows. However, as mentioned above, the Windows Registry contains settings related to core components of the operating system, so make sure you’re only accessing and editing it when absolutely necessary. Any misconfiguration in the Windows Registry can make your system unstable.

Hopefully, this article will be useful for you. Good luck!