Crash Recovery

When there windows crash due to a registry corruption every one has only one thing to say "God Please Help". Any one who works on windows knows what a pain it is to restore registry. Every one in this situation has only one statement to make "computer was fine till last shutdown". Yes that's true Registry corruption is the most unexpected and unwanted failure.

This article will through light on registry back and registry recovery. Registry came into existence with Windows 95 as in previous version windows use to store data in Initialization files (.ini) But that prehistoric.

Different operating system has different formats of registry. So let us start with backing up of windows 98, 95 and me.

Windows 95, 98 and Me

This version of Microsoft windows uses common format of windows registry so steps saving and restoring the windows is the same.

Saving windows Registries

In Windows 95, 98 and Me windows registry is saved by the name user.dat and system.dat which is located in windows directory. To save the window registries please follow the bellow mention steps.

Boot your is system in dos mode, which can be done by press F4 at the booting and then select command prompt only from the start-up menu. This option is not available in windows millennium edition so an alternative is to use a boot floppy.

Reason we should be in real mode dos environment is that if we try to copy these files from windows then we will get a message saying that file is in use.

When we are in dos environment copy the files system.dat and user.dat stored in windows directory to a backup location.

We can automate this task by creating a batch file and calling that batch file from with in autoexec.bat to automatically back up the registry before every boot. To create such a bat file enter the following command. This batch file assume that there is a folder in windows directory called "RegBack" c:\ cd \ cd windows attrib -h -r user.dat attrib -h -r system.dat @echo Copying files to \reg folder copy user.dat c:\windows\reg1 copy system.dat c:\windows\reg1 attrib +h +r user.dat attrib +h +r system.dat

Now call these lines form autoexec.bat and Your registry will save every time before the boot.

In windows millennium you can use the feature of system restore to restore the setting. System Restore First came into existence in windows millennium feature. It saves all the files and restores those files when required.

System restore creates a restore point, In case of a system failure user go to that restore point and restore the system.

Recovering registries is opposite of this process all you need to do is replace system.dat and user.dat from the back up location. So this is Plain and simple

Backing up and recovery in window 2000 / XP and server 2003

windows Xp and 2003 Uses System Restore to make periodic system back ups so in case of a system failure all You need to do is restart your computer in safe mode and start system restore select most recent restore point and restore the system. Simple!

But sometime life is not that simple What if You are unable to start your computer in safe mode. In this case Restoring your computer becomes tough we will talk about restore after a while but let us discuss various ways backing up your registries.

There are various ways in which you can back up the registries,

Starting with System Restore The feature of system restore is with windows since window ME edition. Using system restore is very easy all you need to do is provide a name to restore and rest will be handled by the Operating system.

Drawback is that system restore uses huge amount disk space so an alternative is to save registry in locally in a folder. For this you have to restart your windows in Recovery console. Recovery console is a specially designed tool for recovery purposes. Once you are in recovery console, all you need to do is periodically back up all the files of %systemRoot%\system32\config folder. This is a default folder where the registry is saved. Though a setting in registry can change this default location.

If recovery console is not installed on your system then you can either install recover console by following below mentioned steps.

• Insert your windows cd in the driver
• cancel the auto run screen.
• open run dialog box and enter the following command
• :\i386\winnt32 /cmdcoms and hit enter.

Rename these five files in that folder.

_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SAM to SAM

_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SECCURITY To Security

_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SYSTEM to SYSTEM

_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE To software

_REGISTRY_USER_.DEFAULT To DEFAULT

NOW Copy these five files to %systemRoot%\system32\config folder

And restart your system.

If while accessing _system volume information you get an error saying access is denied then go to %systemroot%\system32\config and delete file name sam then reboot your system in recovery console. And follow the above mentioned steps to restore registry.

But what if system restore was disabled, then in this case you should have registry files stored on a local hard disk and even that is not available then please reload the operating system.

If your computer is connoted to a network in LAN then you can also save your registry on a server or on some other computer or copy it on a re-writable disk and restore it using other computer.

So this was a short story about recovery. No one can prevent windows from crashing but to measures early will save time and effort. As they Say PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE.