Tweak insurance part 1: backing up and editing the registry | Windows XP Performance Tips

Several of the performance tweaks in this guide require you to edit the Windows registry, which can be extremely hazardous to the health of your operating system unless it is done carefully. Editing the registry opens up a world of possibilities for tweaking WindowsXP that would otherwise be unavailable, but it also offers you the ability to completely mess up your system in the time it takes to reboot...

For this reason, we strongly recommend that you back up your registry to a file before attempting any of the registry-related tips in this guide.

To back up the entire registry

1. Open REGEDIT and ensure that 'my computer' is highlighted, then go to file\export.
2. n this window, you need to enter a location to save the exported registry (as a single file) and choose the type of file to create. Also, check the 'all' button at the bottom of the screen to backup the entire registry.
3. There are several possible file types, but we will focus on one only, as the ".reg" file type is the easiest to use. A .reg backup will copy over all changes made to existing portions of the registry when it is restored, while leaving additions to the registry made since the backup untouched.
4. Select the .reg file type and click 'save.'

Restoring the registry from this .reg file is a simple matter of locating the file you created, right clicking it and selecting 'merge.'

All registry related tips in this guide use the REGEDIT program which can be accessed from the run command ('start\run') by typing 'regedit'.

-- 99 Performance Tips --