Repairing Your Registry

The easiest and best way to avoid and fix registry errors is regular use of tools for registry repair. Tools like Registry Defender are available for free over the Internet.

Let's look at ways to determine the most appropriate solution to registry failure.

Registry Defender

Registry Defender is a one stop tool to scan, identify and fix the problems and errors in your windows registry. The extensive research by the development team at Angle Interactive ensures that Registry Defender scans, identifies and fixes all the errors in the system registry. The registry library has been divided in ten basic parts for the purpose of cleaning. The software scans the complete registry (or a part thereof depending on user choice) and presents a list of errors, if any, along with their description.

Restart the System every few hours

Much of the Windows Registry is stored in RAM. If that information gets corrupted, it must be re-read in order to get correct information. When you restart the system, the Registry pulls the data off the hard drive into RAM where it will be used by the system.

You should make it a rule that once an application crashes though system if recovers from that crash it is still unstable. Restart soonest possible to prevent further crashes and damage to data. If a particular program crashes too often there are chances of a bug in that program.

Redetect the Devices

If a device is acting inconsistently, the Registry settings that control the device may be corrupted. In order to reset the Registry, you could remove and reinstall the drivers, or you could ask Windows 95 to redetect them. Many times, when a device is not working correctly, there will be a notification in the Device Manager i.e. with exclamation mark before that device.

NOTE: Obviously, if the device never worked, there can be other problems. But if the device was working, and now it is not, the Registry needs to be restored.

To redetect an item, select Add New Hardware in the Control Panel. The first question asked is "Do you want Windows to search for your new hardware?". If you choose Yes, Windows will do an exhaustive search for "new" devices.

Any device that is incorrectly configured, or whose driver is not found, will be detected and displayed.

Remove the old device and let Windows use the new one.

Restore the Registry from a Backup

Depending on how you backed up the Registry, you can use many options to restore it. One is to use 3rd party programs to create a backup and restore point for your system registry.

Depending on the program, you may be given options regarding overwriting files that are newer, overwriting files that have not changed, and selecting individual files and file types that should not be overwritten.

Reinstall Operating system

The last resort is to reinstall the Windows. Usually, it only takes about a day or so to reinstall just about anything. If you reinstall it over the current files, much of the configuration information would stay the same.

Actually finding the cause and fixing it may take even longer than reinstallation, which is why reinstallation is a fairly common "solution" used by technical support. The main question is, "Do you want to find out what went wrong, or do you just want to make it work?" The answer to that may very well depend on who is asking the question, the frequency of the problem, and the availability of the software for reinstallation.

TIP: In most circumstances, you would remove drivers in the Control Panel. When you remove a driver in the Control Panel to reinstall it, do not click OK and exit between the processes of deleting the driver and reinstalling it. If you do, you will need to restart the system and reload the drivers from disk. If you simply take out the old driver and then add it back immediately (without leaving the dialog box), Windows 95 will reconfigure the settings and reload the information into the Registry without having to reinstall the driver.

Summary

There are several tools that allow you to restore the Registry in case of a failure. Your data will generally be safe, when you use such tools. A popular free trial based tool for recovery from such failures, or more importantly to prevent them, is Registry Defender.

The best way to feel confident about recovering your system Registry is to have good backups.