How to Back Up the Registry

ID: Q132332

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows 95

SUMMARY

This article describes how to back up and restore the Windows 95 registry files.

MORE INFORMATION

To back up and restore the Windows 95 registry files, use one of the following methods:

Method 1

To back up your registry files, follow these steps:

Restart your computer. Press the F8 key when you see the "Starting Windows 95" message, and then choose Safe Mode Command Prompt Only from the Startup menu.

At the command prompt type the following lines, pressing ENTER after each line:
cd windows
attrib -r -h -s system.dat
attrib -r -h -s user.dat
copy system.dat *.bu
copy user.dat *.bu
NOTE: This procedure assumes you do not have any files named System.bu or User.bu. If you do have files by this name, such as a backup of the System.ini file, select a file name extension that is not currently in use.

Restart your computer.

To restore your registry files, follow these steps:

Restart your computer. Press the F8 key when you see the "Starting Windows 95" message, and then choose Safe Mode Command Prompt Only from the Startup menu.

Type the following lines at the command prompt, pressing ENTER after each line:
cd windows
attrib -r -h -s system.dat
attrib -r -h -s system.da0
attrib -r -h -s user.dat
attrib -r -h -s user.da0
ren system.dat system.daa
ren sytem.da0 system.da1
ren user.dat user.daa
ren user.da0 user.da1
copy system.bu system.dat
copy user.bu user.dat
NOTE: This procedure assumes you do not have any files named System.daa, System.da1, User.daa, or User.da1. If you do have files by this name, select a file name extension that is not currently in use.

Restart your computer.

Notes:

You may want to back up more than one version of the registry in case the registry becomes damaged but the damage is not detected until later. If you want to do this, when you are following the steps above, replace the .bu extension with .bu1, .bu2, and so on.

If you have more than one hard disk or a network drive is available, you may want to copy the backup files to the other drive so the backup files do not reside in the same location as the original registry files.

Method 2

You can use the Windows 95 Emergency Recovery Utility to create a backup of your system configuration and registry files and restore these files in case a problem should occur.

For information about using the Windows 95 Emergency Recovery Utility, see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q139437 Windows 95 Emergency Recovery Utility

Additional Information

Windows 95 stores information about the hardware and software in your computer in the System.dat and User.dat files. The System.dat and User.dat files should be treated as a pair. You should back them up together as a pair and restore them together as a pair. These files are hidden, read- only files.

Note that if you are using user profiles, you should also backup the User.dat files located in the following folders


   C:\Windows\Profiles\<username>

where <username> is the name of each person that logs on to Windows 95.

If the registry is damaged, various errors may occur, or your computer may not start properly. For information about troubleshooting registry problems, see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q131431 How to Troubleshoot Registry Errors


Keywords          : kbtool win95 
Version           : 95
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbhowto

Last Reviewed: May 14, 1999