Scanreg in Win2K?

[R2]

I have been told that Win2K has no Scanreg /restore feature like Win98. Is there really NO automatic registry backup in Win2K? This seems to be a step in the WRONG direction!

[WyllyWylly]

What you heard is true. Sort of.

There is no SCANREG utility in Windows 2000. You can't boot to a command line and restore a previous registry. But Windows 2000 does things a little differently, and in my opinion better, tracing its NT roots. It creates a copy of your system's registry at boot time and upon each successful logon marks it as the "Last Known Good". This LKG can be restored during the boot process if you encounter problems.

It's also helpful to note that registry problems are not as prominent in Windows 2000. Windows NT/2000 systems are usually far more stable than 98 based systems and have several features to prevent the operating system from going south, such as the system file checker and Windows FIle Protection.

[R2]

So it only keeps ONE LKG registry copy? That is too bad. I have Win98 set up to keep ten different registry backups -- eh, just in case I screw up!

[WyllyWylly]

Yes, only one that you can access. But there are other features too, such as the repair disk - and I always back up the system state when it is in a known good condition, because you can restore this and go back to *exactly* where you were before trouble began.

[MerC]

Keeping 10 back-ups probably won't do you much good. If you manually restore a Registry from too far back (eg before installation of new apps) you could end up with an unstable system. Scanreg keeps about 5, and even the earliest of these sometimes won't Restore - for good reasons known only to the OS.
In Win2k if you really snarl up (so badly you'd want to re-install) you could try this. When in a 'known good' state, open Regedit and highlight 'My Computer'. Click Registry and then Export Registry File. This allows you to save the whole Registry as a *.reg file. Clicking such a file enables you to Merge it into the current Registry. (I use this when editing and hacking in case of mistakes, or if the icons displayed in the desktop My Computer go weird) However, it will stop with an error if you try to incorporate the whole thing (because some items are in use). You have to hope that whatever was causing you grief has been repaired. If not, you've lost nothing : you were about to re-install your OS anyway.

Rgds