Scanreg and backing up and restoring the Windows Registry

SAVED BY SCANREG

Did you know there’s a utility called ScanReg that backs up your Windows 98 Registry every time you boot Windows 98 successfully? That means if you ever make a mess of your Registry while editing it (and you didn’t back it up first–tsk, tsk), you can still go back.

Select Start, Shut Down; select Restart in MS-DOS Mode; and click OK.

At the DOS prompt, type:

Scanreg /restore

and press Enter.

Select one of the five backups (probably the most recent), press R for Restore, and assuming you get the “Good Registry” seal of approval, press R for Restart.

By default, ScanReg saves only the five most recent Registry backups.

Would you like to increase this number–for example, to keep ten recent backups around? Just make a simple change to the Scanreg.ini file.

In an Explorer window, open the Windows folder and double-click Scanreg.ini to open this file in Notepad. Replace the 5 in the line MaxBackupCopies=5

with any number from 1 to 99–in this case, 10–save your changes, and then close the Notepad window.

From now on, restarting in MS-DOS mode and typing Scanreg /restore

and pressing Enter presents you with the five OLDEST backups of those saved.

Note: To get to the newer ones, either move the older ones to another folder–by default, they’re stored in Windows\Sysbckup and are numbered rb000.cab, rb001.cab,…–or delete them.)