Just like the older Windows versions, the registry is an essential component of the Windows Vista operating system. If the registry gets damaged due to an accumulation of junk information such as obsolete, incorrect, or malicious registry keys, it can cause severe damage to your Vista computer and even make it inaccessible. To save yourself from all this trouble, the best safeguard that you can employ is to make regular backups of the registry. Because there is no specific tool in Windows Vista that enables automatic registry backups, you will have to make manual backups of the registry. Let’s now go through the various options that you can use to backup the Windows Vista registry.

Registry Editor

The Registry Editor tool is primarily used to perform manual edits to the Windows registry. The tool also provides options that you can use to backup either a small portion or the entire registry tree. To back up the Windows Vista registry using Registry Editor, perform the following steps:

   1. Open the Start menu, select Run, type regedit, and press Enter.
   2. Open the File menu, and select Export.
   3. Type the name of the backup file in the File name box.
   4. Next, in the Export range section, to back up the entire registry, select All and to back up a portion of the registry, choose Selected Branch and type the name of the branch you want to back up in the text box.
   5. Select Save to create the backup file.

System Restore

System Restore is a useful tool that Windows Vista users can use