How to Manually Restore the Windows 98/Me Registry

This article describes how to restore a backup copy of the Windows 98 or Windows Millennium Edition (Me) registry.

Under normal circumstances, Windows is capable of detecting and recovering from registry errors automatically. If Windows is incapable of this, a previous copy of the registry can be restored manually. Windows makes and stores a backup of the registry when you start your computer successfully each day. By default, five previous copies or the registry are stored. To restore one of these previous copies:

1. Start your computer, press and hold CTRL, and then choose Safe Mode Command Prompt Only from the Windows 98 Startup menu. If you are running Windows Me, start your computer with the startup disk.
2. At the MS-DOS prompt, type cd\windows\command, and then press ENTER. Where windows is the name of the folder in which Windows is installed.
   
   
3. At the C: prompt, type scanreg /restore, and then press ENTER.
4. Select the previous registry you want to restore, and then press ENTER.NOTE: A properly working registry has the word "Started" next to the date.
   
   
5. When you receive notification that you restored a properly working registry, press ENTER to restart your computer.

For additional information about the Windows Registry Checker Tool, see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: