BEFORE you touch your REGISTRY

[army0fdead]

Hey people. Before you follow any directions and help that require for any changes to be made in your registry, you should always back it up first.

It's very easy to do. When you have your registry open, before any actual changes are made, click on 'File' on the top left of your registry window. In some older windows OSs, it is called "Registry' instead of file. Then click on 'Export'. I suggest naming your file 'regbakupMMYY'. MM being the month and the YY being the year. Like regbakup1006. Them make sure the 'Export Range' is set to ALL. I also recommend you save the .reg file on your desktop. This way its easier to find if you have to reload it. Then click save. Now you can make changes to your registry.

If a problem comes up and your comp is going nuts on you after you made a registry change. Go head and double click the back up registry file you have on your desktop. It will load your registry back to before the changes.

[TBS]

Its generally best not to mess around in your registry at all - all we normally ask people to do in their registry is to confirm their CD key and correct it if they typed it incorrectly, if you are doing just that then theres no way you can mess up your computer.

[army0fdead]

you mean it's generally best not to mess around in your registry when you don't know what you're doing...right?

cuz me an' da registry, we go way back mon.

[TBS]

well yeah, though even if you know what youre doing theres rarely any reason to go poking around in there.

[army0fdead]

i disagree. the registry is a direct and sure way to fix any issue on your computer. and its not open to translation or interpretation by your operating system as are some of the other methods of adjusting and fixing settings/problems.

one example is having to reinstall your network stack(TCP/IP), it never removes the WinSock keys if you do it via network settings. but the winsocks need to be removed in order to get a very clean install of the the stack. this you need to do via the registry.

ever notice that when you uninstall a program from your add/remove programs or the uninstall tool of the program, it leaves chunks of itself behind? again, a cleanup in the registry is needed to make sure your computers resources and paths are not headed towards these entries.