Registry management questions

Hi everybody, I am looking for some freeware tool being able to make backups and restore the windows registry. Also the feature of detecting changes that application installations make on the registry (and roll them back) would be a plus. I have looked in Internet, but everything I found was shareware (and quite expensive, I must say). If you don't know of any such a tool being free, I could just backup the files that make up the registry, and then restore them when things go wrong. Do you think this is feasible? Exactly what files should I backup? What is the right way to restore them? From DOS, maybe? Please remember: exporting and importing the whole registry could be of no use when a registry key is screwing things up. If the key does not exist in the registry export file, it won't be altered when importing, so the problem will remain. You need to substitute the registry with the backup. I am also looking for some tool to see the BIOS settings from Windows XP Pro. Do you know of any doing this? Thanks, Pirata

If you are using XP you can use the rollback facility to recover from self-inflicted registry problems (unless, of course, you have stuffed things to the point where you can't reboot - in which case restoring a backup might also be difficult). There is advice on this in the excellect book "Microsoft Windows XP Inside Out" (Microsoft Press). SiSoft Sandra works with XP and tells you a great deal about your system but I don't recall whether bios settings are included. There is a free version for trial but it doesn't do everything the paid-for version does.

About the registers thing, i backupign program settings and things like that normally. Just save the register key for the program using the MS tool regedit. (Hit Start, select run and type regedit) As far im quite satisfacted with it and i can restore setting for my email jsut by double-clicking on the file, winblows ask me, if im sure about adding these informations to registers and that it is! :D