BackupReg-II
V3.2

 Hi,

This is just a quick note to tell you something about BackupReg-II for Win95. I wrote BackUpReg for the simple reason that it's too damned easy to bring win95 (and you) to its knees. The single most import file, for win95, is the Registry. If the registry gets corrupted well that's that, unless you have a backup.

BackUpReg makes that backup for you. It can do it manually, "click on the BackUpReg-II menu item" or automatically, using the SAGE. Or any scheduling program to run the executable with the '/b' command line argument.

(I.e. $Installed path\backupreg.exe /b).

 

To have SAGE run BackUpReg-II automatically:

    1. Double Click on the SAGE Icon in the task bar tray.
    2. In the SAGE window select the menu item ‘Program | Schedule a new program’.
    3. In the Schedule New Program dialog box either type


      4. "$Installed path\backupreg.exe" /b, where $Installed path is the directory where you installed BackUpReg-II, or use the Browse button to select BackUpReg-II with a File|Open Dialog box. In either case don’t forget the /b command line argument and leave it outside the quotes. Yes the quotes are required in this case.

    4. Type in a descriptive name in the description text box.
    5. Now click the ‘When to Run’ button. And select the frequency you want the registry backed up.
It’s best to run BackUpReg-II once manually to insure the default configuration is what you want before letting it run automatically. Also you’ll need to update Your Startup disk.

BackUpReg has two parts; the backup part runs under Windows 95 and the restore part runs in the DOS mode reached through a win95 Startup disk. The GUI part, under windows, allows you to Backup your registry immediately (button ‘Backup’), update an existing Startup disk (options|Update Startup Disk), and manage your registry backup database (button ‘Manage’). The aim of all this is so you can do a registry restore if Win95 bombs due to a registry corruption.

To restore to a backed up registry just boot from a BackUpReg updated Startup disk and on the command line type- 'yes' to the question 'Restore Registry?'. If you unexpectedly exit just restart the restore program with the typed command 'restorrg'. As with the GUI part of BackUpReg-II, the RESTORRG program has had some updates too. It now has a help command to list all the commands that it accepts. It also allows the user to alter the directory searched for the backups (this is handy if you use multiple backup directories). See page 3 for a list of the major changes between version 1.25 and 2.1.  Most importantly RESTORRG.BAT now conditionally calls RSTRUSR.BAT and RSTRUSR.BAT restores all the different user registry settings for all users defined on the system  (remember the user that ran BackUpReg-II will have his/her settings at the system level).

 

To install BackUpReg execute the file RegBackup.exe; this file is a self-extracting zip file. Do this in a temporary directory and when it finishes run the extracted setup.exe file. If you have any of the earlier versions it is imperative that you uninstall them first. Let me reiterate that: it is imperative that you uninstall the previous version before installing BackUpReg-II. The reason has to do with the uninstaller removing files it thinks are no longer being used. If you uninstall the old version after installing the new version you will probably be missing some files, to correct this re-install the new version, BackUpReg-II.

That's pretty much it. Make sure you update your startup floppy as soon as possible. Once it's updated you won't have to update it again; unless there is a new release; V2.1 has a new RESTORRG.BAT and a new RSTRUSR.BAT. Actually, in the new version 2 you can select the directory into which your backups will be saved. Every time you change this setting you'll need to re-update your Startup floppy.

BackUpReg allows 999 backups at that point it will roll over and start to over write the older backups. (This changed with V1.2 and above. You can now control the size of the backup database and the number of backups is calculated based on registry size divided into backup database size.) If you have "manual reset" selected it will ask you if you want to over write the existing backup; if you choose No then you won't get a back up. If you have selected Automatic reset it will automatically over write the older backups. When the /b switch is used the over write protection is ignored and older backups are overwritten as needed. As was stated earlier, you can now select the directory used to store the backups. It is possible to select a floppy drive, but NOT advisable. This is due to, first, the size of the registry, mine is 3 MB so it won’t fit, and second, to the design of the ‘restorrg.bat’ program. With V2 the restorrg.bat program expects to have access to rstsusr.bat and will error out if this file in not available. It is possible to get the whole thing working with out a startup floppy, but it is difficult and very sensitive to step by step procedural mistakes. However, if anyone wants to do this I’ll e-mail a step by step method of setting up to run with out the startup floppy.

With Version V3.2 the user operation have not changed, but the update of the startup disk has been fixed to work with Win98.
 
 
 
 
 

Mark A. Sowards