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Many of the tips I post on this site involve editing the Windows Registry.
And in most cases, the first step of those procedures always explains how to create a backup of the Registry before proceeding on to the actual “tip”.
It occurred to me earlier today that I should probably make the steps for backing up and restoring the Registry a tip in its own right.
I recommend that you always make a backup of the Registry before you attempt to make any changes to it. That way if something goes wrong you’ll be able to restore it to it’s previous (working) state.
Luckily, it’s very easy to make a backup of the Windows Registry, and if need be, restore the Registry from a backup. Here’s a short video that shows how to do it, step-by-step:
Note: You can watch this video at full screen by clicking the little “square” icon in the lower-right corner of the video after it begins playing.
Do you prefer following written instructions? Here you go…
How to back up the Windows Registry:
1 – Press the Windows+R key combination to open a “Run” box.
2 – Type regedit and press the Enter key, then click Yes in response to the “User Account Control” dialog.
3 – Click File>Export, give the backup file a name, and then click Save.
4 – Click File>Exit to close the Registry Editor.
How to restore the Registry from a backup:
Note: Registry backup files end with the .reg file extension.
1 – Press the Windows+R key combination to open a “Run” box.
2 – Type regedit and press the Enter key, then click Yes in response to the “User Account Control” dialog.
3 – Click File>Import.
4 – Navigate to the Registry backup file that you wish to restore from (again, it will have the extension .reg) and double-click it. Follow the prompts until the process is complete.
5 – Click File>Exit to close the Registry Editor.
That’s all there is to it. Now you know how to back up the Windows Registry before making changes to it as well as how to restore it if something goes wrong.