How To: Create and Restore Registry Backups of Windows NT/2000/2003/XP/Vista

It’s a tool that we must have before we will ever need it for our disaster recover operations. Both as End users and Corporate users, we often run into issues with our Windows systems where we need to either perform System Restore or restoring a copy of registry from backup would fix the issue. But did we ever take that backup? Or, do we know how to create and restore registry backups?

Users who are not so tech savvy will find ERUNT (Emergency Recovery Utility NT) as one of the most easiest to use registry backup and restoring tool. Taking a backup and restoring in an event of a corrupt registry was never so easy! This small tool [under 1MB], can take a complete backup set of your registry including the security and user hives. All you have to do is point it to a folder to store the backup copies and be rest assured that you are in control.

Restoring is a pretty simpler task with an executable that sits right in your backup folder that can be launched to restore from a backup copy. Command line switches for automated registry backup and restoration are also available with this tool. Just have the automated backup features enabled and let the tool create a backup every time you start your windows. Technicians will find it more useful as they handle tons of calls on daily basis. Now all they have to do is install the tool and let it take automated backups of registry and when the system crashes, all they have to do is restore from a previously backed up copy.

» Tip: Use the default ERDNT folder inside your Windows folder for taking backups. This will ensure that you have access to this folder from the Windows Recovery Console in case Windows does not boot anymore.

Wait! That’s not all about this tool. There is another small but power registry optimizer tool that is bundled along with ERUNT and it’s called NTREGOPT (NT Registry Optimizer).

How to use ERUNT?

Pretty simple and straight forward. Let’s see the steps.

» Start the program and accept the welcome message.

» Select the backup options.

» Click ‘OK’ to start the back up and let it finish. Depending on your system’s configuration, it might take few minutes to complete the backup.

How to restore the registry?

Assuming that your windows is running normally and you wish to restore the registry from an already available backup copy, do the following:

» Browse to the folder where you have been saving the backup copies of registry. Since each restore folder has a copy of ERDNT.EXE (that’s the file we’ll use to restore the registry from backup), select the appropriate folder and then double click the file.

» This will launch the executable and begin the restoration process. Post which you will be required to reboot the system to activate the restored copy of registry.

How to restore if system doesn’t boot up?

If windows does not boot up anymore, you should reboot it and hit F8 and then select ‘Last Known Good Configuration’ option. If that doesn’t help, try to bring up windows in Safe Mode from the same options menu and perform restoration of registry as per previous section when windows was running normally.

If even this doesn’t help, you will need to perform some advanced steps to recover from the situation.

[Download ERUNT with NTREGOPT] | [Author's Website]