Win98 Registry Restoral

Win98 improves the security of your Registry by making not one, but five separate backups. These backups are compressed into "cabinet" files called Rb000.cab, Rb001.cab, and so on in your \Windows\Sysbckup folder. On my system, each consumes about 1MB.

You can go back to a previous working Registry in a few simple steps:

	restart your PC
	hit F8 right after the beep, or hold down the Ctrl key during bootup
	choose Command Prompt Only
	type:   scanreg /restore
	select the most recent backup or an earlier one

NOTE:  you can also try "scanreg /fix" but it is typically not very effective

These backup files are created automatically when you start Win98 (but no more than once per day). Win98 runs a program called ScanReg using the command line scanregw/autorun. You can create a backup with ScanReg anytime you wish (for example, before you install a new program or manually edit your Registry). To do so, click Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Information, Tools, Registry Checker.

If you somehow corrupt the Registry in Win98, you can choose to restore one of the previous five backups. Unfortunately, there's nothing in the manual you get with Win98 that tells you anything about this.

To restore a backup Registry, you must hold down your Ctrl key while your system's power-on self-test is running, then choose Command Prompt Only to get to a DOS prompt. You then type scanreg/restore to run the DOS version of ScanReg. This presents you with a list of backups and their dates so you can choose one.

The process is controlled by a text file called ScanReg.ini in your Windows folder. Open it in Notepad and read the simple documentation.  You can edit ScanReg.ini to increase the number of backup copies Win98 saves (as many as 99 if you're paranoid) and specify other files (such as Config.sys) for ScanReg to back up along with the Registry.