Registry Backups

pafos

JV16 set to back up registry in Windows Tweaks but I cannot see how to restore it if needed in emergency. ?? or am I missing something somewhere.

redseujac

In fact it's not a jv16 PowerTools but rather a (former) Windows setting.

You can read these articles about automatic Windows Registry backups. In fact those backups are not always necessary.

https://www.windowslatest.com/2019/06/29/automatic-registry-backup-in-windows-10/

https://www.windowslatest.com/2019/07/01/enable-automatic-registry-backup-in-windows-10/

jv16

In addition to what redseujac said: The main backup functionality of jv16 PowerTools is the Windows System Restore. Thus, in case something should go wrong, please restore a Windows System Restore point. jv16 PowerTools also does create some custom backups, especially of registry data, these you can access and restore via the Backups tool within jv16 PowerTools.

Why doesn't jv16 PowerTools offer a full registry backup feature, one might ask? That's because 1) Windows already offers backup features and we want to offer our users things that Windows does not, it doesn't make sense to me to do the same things what Windows does already just with a different UI and 2) there are some inherent dangers in full registry backups. For example, if you create a full registry backup today, then install new hardware or software to the system and then restore that backup, it might paradoxically make your system not work any longer. Hence, full registry backups are not trivial or as a good idea as one might think.

redseujac

The older versions of Windows included a task that automatically created backups of the Windows Registry and saved it in RegBack folder. In old versions, Microsoft stored these Registry backups in System32\config\RegBack folder and you could use the files to restore the Registry when something went wrong. The feature has been disabled quietly in Windows 10 to reduce overall disk space footprint of the OS. It is somehow replaced by System Restore and also recommended to use the latter.

Maybe it would be better to drop this Windows automatic backup option from the Windows Tweaks in jv16 PowerTools and also not display anymore the message appearing sometimes about Windows Backups not being enabled.

pafos

Thanks for the useful replies All is now clearer