How to Back Up the Windows Registry
You can back up the Windows Registry this way in any version of Windows, including Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP. Once complete, a new file with the REG file extension will be created in the location you selected in Step 6 and with the file name you chose in Step 7. To back up the entire registry, locate Computer by scrolling to the very top of the left side of the registry (where all the “folders” are). To back up a specific registry key, drill down through the folders until you find the key you’re after. Not sure what to back up? Choosing to back up the entire registry is a safe bet. If you know which registry hive you’ll be working in, backing up the entire hive is another good option.
If you’re making a full backup, the All option should be pre-selected for you. If you’re backing up a specific key, you’ll see that path listed. So, continuing the example from a few steps back, you’d get a file named Complete Registry Backup-mo-day-year.reg. You can now make whatever changes you need to make to the Windows registry, knowing full well that you can undo them all at any time you want. Fortunately, it’s very easy to manually export either the entire registry at once or even just a specific registry key if you’re only making changes to a few values or keys. Once it’s been saved, you should feel comfortable that nearly any change, so long as it was made within the scope of the backup you made, can easily be undone.
Restoring the Windows Registry
See our article How to Restore the Windows Registry for help restoring the registry back to the point at which you backed it up. Hopefully, your changes are successful and problem-free, but if not, getting things back to working order is pretty easy.
