Backing up your registry regularly is a good practice are you can restore your registry to a previous state before installing a program, making any changes in your computer settings, or running a registry cleaner, among other things. This ensures that you are prepared in case something goes wrong, and you won’t have to reinstall your entire system because of a registry error.
If you’re using a registry cleaner to tidy up your registry, most of them incorporate a back up function. One click and you have a back up that can be restored just as easily. For the sake of safety though, you’d still need to know how to do a manual back up in case your registry cleaner doesn’t have the function. So how do I back up a registry? There are three ways to do this.
System Restore
This is probably the easiest way to do this. Creating a System Restore point gives you a snapshot of your registry, your computer settings, and other information so you don’t lose any of them. In case something goes wrong, you can just revert to a restore point to undo any changes you may have done since then. If you’re using Windows XP, this is the main method to do it.
First you have to click Start, click Run, type in %SystemRoot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe, and click OK. This opens up the user interface for creating a System Restore point. In case you have System Restore turned off, just open the System Properties and un-tic the Turn off System Restore box.
Once you have a restore point, you can safely use a registry cleaner. You can undo errors that occur while cleaning, defragging or making changes to your registry by reverting back to the said restore point.
RegEdit
If you’re using Windows Vista or 7, you can open the Registry Editor by clicking Start, clicking Run, and typing regedit. With the Registry Editor, you can export a specific part or parts of your registry into text files. Just select the registry key or subkey you want to back up, click the File menu, click Export, and save the backup copy.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Before using a registry cleaner or making any changes to your Windows registry, you need to create a backup in case an error crops up. This way, you have all your bases covered.