Can I restore the registry and nothing else?

Hi.

With Acronis True Image 11 Home is there an easy way to restore the registry - and nothing else?

Thanks.

 

Not with True Image ... but that's what a Windows Restore point is for.

 

While I do have a small amount of space allowed for Restore Points, I normally just restore a full backup of my C drive. I have had good luck using System Restore but TI usually comes to mind first and I feel more confident using it. Since my space has been restricted older restore points are often gone.

Since the registry is so tightly tied to all the crappola on the OS/apps partition I consider it best do keep them in sync. Also the reason I feel the OS/Apps stuff should be in a different partition from important data.

 

Thanks for your replies guys.

I have a minor problem with the registry (Windows XP Quick Launch won't load) and for some reason Windows Restore fails to restore any of it's backups. I was therefore hoping for a quick and easy registry restore using True Image. A full restore of my True Image backup is problematic since my last full backup occurred after the Quick Launch problem first appeared.

I can certainly see the advantage of keeping separate OS/Apps partitions... especially now! Simething I will have to bear in mind for the future.

 

Just to clarify my description. OS/Apps is only one partition - IMO there is little to be gained in splitting them since the apps tend to write stuff in various places on C in addition to registry entries.

It is the personal data files that need to be in a different partition from C. You can move My Documents etc to a different drive but my use of it is strictly as a temporary scratch area. Anything of importance I keep in a different partition.

My one deviation from this scheme is for large games like Flight Simulator. I install them in a special partition. They rarely change and you do have the insallation CDs if you really need them. No sense continually imaging such a large amount of material with every Full image of C.

 

imprator,

You probably do this, but I use ccleaner to do regular registry backups independent of ATI. Quick and easy.


Ken

 

Before you do anything, make a full backup of your system. That way, you can experiment. If the experiment is a failure, you can restore the image and try another experiment.

Have you Googled Quick Launch missing? (or variations on that incase it's a simple Registry hack)

In order to restore the Registry from a TI image, you'd have to mount the image and save the Registry hives to another location. Then, you'd have to operate in the command mode to copy the recovered files over the current ones. My guess is that this would be much easier to do if you removed the hard drive and mounted it in another computer as a slave or in a USB enclosure.

If you pursue this, let us know what happens.

 

If you cannot restore to an earlier restore point then your best best is a full disk/partition restore. Suppose youor fill disk/partition backup is older than the data files you have on your PC -- you can try making a My Data backup of your "data" files for safe keeping and then do a full disk/partiton restore to get back your registry settings. You can then restore your data files if they are later than the full disk/partition backup.

Trying to restore by themselves the half dozen or so files that make up the registry hives is a dangerous way to go -- too much changes in the registry while the PC is running, and as noted above, they are too intimately tied to program files for it to be safe to just restore a copy of registgry files at a later date.