DD said:
I want to recover my Win 7 registry from my Acronis True Image
backup but I don't know where to find it! Anyone explain what it is
called? The backup is about a month old; when I restore it, what will
not be there and how will I be able to bring it up to date?
Thanks in anticipation!
DD
I'm not an Acronis user, but I can find a web page here.
"How to restore individual files with disk imaging backup software?"
http://www.acronis.com/resource/solutions/restore/2005/how-to-restore-individual-files.html
"You can open a virtual disk by choosing the Explore Image command in the
tools menu and then selecting the disk image you want to use. The image
is presented as a virtual drive, complete with its own drive letter."
I booted up the Windows 7 laptop for a look, and this is what I found.
These are registry files, plus a set of some sort of backups.
C:\Windows\System32\Config
COMPONENTS 33MB
DEFAULT
SAM
SECURITY
SOFTWARE 53MB
SYSTEM 18MB
regback\
DEFAULT
SAM
SECURITY
SOFTWARE 51MB
SYSTEM 18MB
The "regback" folder, appears to hold backup copies. In the event of
some kind of malware attack though, they might not be clean or defect
free. Once thing that is puzzling there, is why the "COMPONENTS" file
isn't present in regback as well. Now, COMPONENTS is something new
in Windows 7, whereas WinXP has those five files. Also, Windows 7
has a giant file structure, that contains all sorts of versions of
files in it, and perhaps COMPONENTS tracks some aspect of that.
You can use your recovery DVD, to boot the computer and give you
a command prompt. (On my laptop, there is a menu item provided by
Microsoft, to burn a recovery DVD that can be used to give you
a command prompt.) You can use the "copy" command at the command
prompt, to move the current registry files to backups. Then copy
over the month old ones you have. It would be *similar* to this
procedure. (The source of your files will be different. But you
still want to make backup copies, the .bak step.) The reason for
using a recovery DVD to boot the computer, is so the OS isn't
using the files, and they're not "locked" or anything.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545
If you use a month old set of registry files, they won't really align well
with the current state of the computer. Any software installed since
those registry files were saved, wouldn't have its settings stored in
the registry. Using a copy of the registry in a Restore Point makes
sense, because whey you restore, the system state matches the registry.
Using month old registry files will undoubtedly make the
machine bootable again (if a corrupt registry was preventing ir
from booting), but it might not be the best of solutions.
There are a whole bunch of possibilities you might explore, before
doing that. Using the files in regback is one possibility. And perhaps
the system's built-in repair capability, will use those for you.
The system has things like "last known good configuration" and
so on. And system restore, if it is usable, also allows you to
move backwards in time (losing any recent changes you might have
made to the system state).
As long as you proceed methodically, and keep backups, you have
nothing to fear. For example, on my Windows 7 laptop, I removed the
hard drive, connected it to the desktop (using SATA cabling), and
made a backup copy while it was connected. I make image copies
(sector by sector) with "dd", to prevent me from screwing up file
permissions and the like. Now, if I subjected my laptop to my
crude attempts at hacking, and didn't like the results, I always
have the option of just restoring the image (copying it back sector
by sector). So as long as you can connect the drive to some other
computer, and have made sure you can put everything back, then you
can try any experiment you want.
(What a cheapskate uses to make backups... Requires care, because
one typing mistake, and your whole disk can be ruined. It's like
juggling beakers of nitroglycerin.)
http://www.chrysocome.net/dd
Paul
