System Registry File is Missing or Corrupt: 5 Ways to Fix It

You can think of the Registry as a database for storing and accessing configuration data. Like all good databases the Registry can store different types of data. Data is stored in a hierarchical manner rather like the folders on a hard disk. Registry data that is currently in use is cached in memory to provide better performance.

• The registry itself is a big mess of a database, and you won’t find much by clicking through it yourself, of course.
• ERUNT, or The Emergency Recovery Utility NT, is a utility that can be used to backup and restore the Windows Registry.
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• You can also edit the registry by downloading and running .reg files, which contain a change that’s applied when you run them.
• In this case, you can replace the damaged registry files using WinPE in Command Prompt by booting your computer into the Windows 10 recovery environment or from Windows 10 installation media.

Follow along as we discuss the instructions to backup and restore Windows Registry in Windows. However, at times, you may want to modify the registry, perhaps to enable a hidden feature or tweak a specific system setting. But because registry hacks can sometimes lead to unintended consequences, you must backup the registry before any of your registry hacks.

File types and actions

Now double-click IRPStackSize, change its value to 32. By configuring the paging file-clearing rule in the Registry Editor, you can enhance the security of the virtual memory on your Windows 10 PC. If the above trick didn’t work for you, head over to our exhaustive tutorial describing 5 ways to install Windows the program cant start because tapisrv.dll 11 on old PCs with unsupported hardware for more details. Rename the newly-created entry toAllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU. I used this Registry tweak to install Windows 11 on my 8-year-old Dell All-in-One PC and HP laptop with Intell Core i3 CPU. In the Command Prompt window, click your account name to log in. Under the Advanced options page, click Command Prompt.

If you don’t want to mess around with the Registry directly, you can achieve the same result with Cacheman, by going to the Usability Tweaks tab and unchecking the Shortcut text checkbox. Make sure that you have a backup of the Registry before attempting to make any changes to it. The intention of this tutorial is to introduce the rather complex Windows Registry subject to the average user. We will illustrate it with screenshots and meaningful howto examples, followed by a Frequently Asked Questions section.

Of course this event will only be logged if the key’s audit policy is enabled for Set Value permission for the appropriate user or a group in the user is a member. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE doesn’t actually exist on the computer, it is just a container holding various registry data.

Backing up the Registry

You can’t see the HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG and HKEY_DYN_DATA aliased subtrees on remote systems, but you don’t edit these subtrees anyway. Regedt32 shows only the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and HKEY_USERS subtrees.

Under Available Stand-alone Snap-ins, click Group Policy, and then click Add. The easiest way to backup the Registry is to simply create a Restore Pointbefore making any changes. To create a Restore Point, in Control Panel, in the System and Security section, select System section. In the left panel of the System window, click on the System Protectionlink to open the System Properties dialog box. In The System Propertiesdialog box, select the “System Protection” tab and, near the bottom of the dialog box, click on the button. You’ll be prompted for a name for the new restore point.

RunOnce will be empty, but it can contain entries for programs that are to be run once at startup. After the program has been run Windows deletes its entry from the Registry. This key would typically be used by a Setup program to perform some configuration task that can only be done right after a restart. Services are programs that run as part of the system. Under Windows NT they have extra privileges compared with normal tasks.