The Windows Registry is an essential part of the operating system and provides access to settings and features that are not otherwise accessible from the user interface.
While it's a great tool for experienced users, it's best to avoid experimenting with it for beginners. The main reason is that modifying or deleting entries without fully understanding their purpose and function can lead to system instability or even a system crash.
As is recommended in many similar cases, when we are going to make changes that we do not know if they will "run", it is a good idea to keep a copy (backup) of the current version, which we know works.
However, unlike modifying the Windows Registry, which can be confusing to the user, creating a backup can be done very quickly and easily.
How do we create a backup?
As with modifying the Registry, creating a Registry backup is done through the Registry Editor. To execute the Registry editor, we must “run” it either through Windows search, or through run (Windows key + R) with the name “regedit”.
After running regedit, we can see on the left the lists with all the entries that exist for our system. However, before we change or remove any entry, we should keep a copy. This can be done by going to File -> export where in the export range we should select either the option “ALL” or “Selected branch”, depending on our preference.
If the entire Registry copy is selected (Export range = All), the process will take approximately 1 minute, and the .reg file that will be created will be approximately 300mb (according to our own testing).
Correspondingly, if we want to import from the file we created, we must go to File -> Import and select our file.
This process is recommended when we want to make changes to the Registry, and can be performed by almost all versions of Windows 10.
