Windows 10: Backup Registry, Reset Windows, and Restore Registry afterwards

This could be one of the ridiculous post have ever made. But, I have been wondering what will happen if I backup all of the registry keys, reset Windows 10, and then restore the registry keys? Will it affect device driver? Will the device be bricked?

:)

 

27 Driver Updates - Really?!

You can try it but please backup your registry first, just in case:

PERFORM A REGISTRY BACKUP

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/backup-and-restor...

Please let me know.

 

New folder function doesn't work when saving files.

After investigating, this seems to be a registry problem. Please do the below:

1) CREATE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR WINDOWS REGISTRY

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/backup-and-restor...

2) CHANGE REGISTRY SETTINGS AS BELOW

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/desktop-does-not-...

Please let mw know if this works.

 

No. You could but it will not work as you expect it to.

Assuming you back up and restore your registry what do you expect will happen?

Firstly after you restore your registry (which is only a database) will say "I have my drivers here". Then you restore and they are not there any more.

Why? Because your drivers are in C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore directory and you've now overwritten it. This is not part of your registry database but if you restore the old version of your registry it will look for drivers here and they simply will not exist.

Next you may have installed some programs. Their paths will also be saved in the registry database but they will not exist as you have overwritten C:\Program Files or whatever.

Your device will not be bricked (probably) but it will not work well if you do this.

A clean install (or restore) would be better. There are very few times restoring your registry would be a good idea. Pretty much the only time is to load the last known good configuration after a failed boot but even that almost never works.

Don't do it, but, if you do (for fun or learning), make a backup first.

 

Thank you for your explanation!

 

Hope it helped. It is almost never a good idea to restore the registry.

CCleaner for example lets you back it up before "cleaning" it. You would have to be mad to restore the backup later the same day - let alone the next week or after doing a restore.

If I was you I'd ignore it. If something doesn't work it is faster and better to in-place upgrade than faff around with the registry. Definitely don't use any sort of "cleaner" or "optimizer"

20 years ago sometimes the registry was a problem and got big and made things slow. Today it doesn't.

 

I see. That is why I saw some of my friends' devices have some sort of 'registry cleaner' software installed and claiming that it could optimizes their device.