In every version of Microsoft Windows, you have a registry that constantly gets modified and accessed throughout its use. There are two main reasons why you need to backup Windows registry. The first reason is that you may need to manually repair the registry due to an error on your system. The second reason is that you may want to tweak your computer within the registry with a fix that is not available in any visible menu. This article will look at these main two reasons of why you would need to backup Windows registry.

Picture this: you are working on your computer and then all of a sudden you get an error message popup in Microsoft Word. After doing some research on the error, you are led to a solution that requires you to change a value of a key in the Windows registry. At this point, you can either confidently apply the registry fix or save a copy of the registry and then apply it. This is one of the reasons you should do a backup of the windows registry. If you are not satisfied that your problem has been fixed, then you could easily just recover from the changes to the registry. Sometimes you may find a solution that will help the performance of your PC.

These performance optimizations are called tweaks. A registry tweak allows you to change a setting in your system that is not available in a software or visible menu. You maybe required to dig deep into the registry in order to apply the registry tweak. This is another reason why you need to backup Windows registry. A tweak may not always do what you want, but at least you have a copy of the registry before you applied the change.

Now I just gave you two good reasons why you should backup Windows registry. However, you may not know how to do a manual backup of the registry. When you do backup the registry, you have the option of backing up the entire registry or just a specific key. If you are interested, I have illustrated a step-by-step approach with screenshots to backing up the registry on my blog. Just keep this in mind: the basic principle is that if you are doing any sort of manual changes in the windows registry, you may want to backup Windows registry to save you the trouble of trying to recover from the changes.

Brad Carter is a computer consultant junkie that loves to dive into the technicalities of PC optimization. He runs a blog that provides free tips, reviews, and solutions on topics of registry repair. To learn more about registry fixers and PC performance, run over to Brad's blog at http://windowsxpregistryrepair.blogspot.com

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