Backup the Windows registry

An MS-DOS batch-file to backup and restore the Windows 95 registry files.

Contents

1. Introduction.
2. Listing of this batch-file.

Introduction

A wise precaution when making any changes to your computer, is to back-up your system files. In the case of Windows 95 it is the registry that is most important, and also most fragile. The installation of a new piece of software may occasionally damage the registry, making Windows behave erratically or even inoperable.

There are many pieces of software available to back-up the registry, and quite a lot of batch files too. This just happens to be the solution that I use. It's simple, and it works well.

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Listing of this batch file

::Backup Registry files user.dat & system.dat::
::
::------------------------------------------------------------------
:: To make this work on your system please do the following;
::
::1- Make sure that the paths to SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT are correct
::   They will always appear in your Win95 folder as hidden, system
::   and read-only files. This batch file takes care of all of that,
::   as long as the path is correct.
::
::2- The 'c:\user\regbak...' path pointed to below can be
::   changed to a folder of your choice.
::
::------------------------------------------------------------------
::
::
::1. Select backup or restore::
::
@echo off
If %1==/A goto Backup
If %1==/a goto Backup

:manual
cls
echo.
echo  REGISTRY BACKUP
echo  _______________________________________________________________________
echo.
echo  A   BackUp system.dat and user.dat
echo  B   Restore system.dat and user.dat
echo  C   Quit
echo.
echo  _______________________________________________________________________
echo.
choice /c:abc Choose an option
if errorlevel 3 goto Quit
if errorlevel 2 goto Restore
if errorlevel 1 goto Backup
::
:Backup
attrib c:\windows\user.dat -r -s -h
attrib c:\windows\system.dat -r -s -h
Copy c:\windows\user.dat c:\archive\regbak\user.da0 /v
Copy c:\windows\system.dat c:\archive\regbak\system.da0 /v
attrib c:\windows\user.dat +r +s +h
attrib c:\windows\system.dat +r +s +h
Goto Quit
::
:Restore
attrib c:\windows\user.dat -r -s -h
attrib c:\windows\system.dat -r -s -h
Copy c:\archive\regbak\user.da0 c:\windows\user.dat /v
Copy c:\archive\regbak\system.da0 c:\windows\system.dat /v
attrib c:\windows\user.dat +r +s +h
attrib c:\windows\system.dat +r +s +h
::
Goto Quit
:Quit
@echo _________________
@echo         Completed

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