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 Windows OS Hub / Windows 10 / Enable Automatic System Registry Backup on Windows 10/11

January 21, 2025

Enable Automatic System Registry Backup on Windows 10/11

Microsoft has disabled the automatic system registry backup task starting with Windows 10 1803. In previous Windows versions, the Automatic Maintenance job ran a scheduler task that copied all the registry hives in the \Windows\System32\config\RegBack folder.

Disabling automatic registry backup saves disk space, according to Microsoft (The system registry is no longer backed up to the RegBack folder starting in Windows 10 version 1803). And if you need to revert to a previous version of the registry, you can use a restore point to restore the registry. But in fact, a registry backup takes up only a few hundred MB of disk space, which is generally not much 🤷‍♂️, and the System Protection using restore points is disabled by default in modern versions of Windows. However, having an actual registry backup allows users to easily fix common Windows issues by replacing damaged registry files with working versions from the backup. Therefore, it is advisable to have such a backup as a last resort.

You can still enable automatic registry backups in modern Windows 10 and 11 builds. Just create the EnablePeriodicBackup registry parameter (REG_DWORD) with a value of 1 in the HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Configuration Manager reg key. You can create this registry option manually or by using a PowerShell command:

New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Configuration Manager" -Name EnablePeriodicBackup -Type DWORD -Value 1

Then restart the computer.

EnablePeriodicBackup - registry parameter

The automatic registry backup will be started as part of the automatic system maintenance by calling the RegIdleBackup scheduler task. To run this task manually, open taskschd.msc and run the RegIdleBackup task in the Microsoft\Windows\Registry folder.

RegIdleBackup in Task Sheduler

Or you can manually start the Automatic Maintenance in Windows with the command

MSchedExe.exe Start

Among other things, this runs the RegIdleBackup task. The task copies the system registry files (DEFAULT, SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE, and SYSTEM) from the %windir%\System32\config to the %windir%\System32\config\RegBack folder.

Backup files in RegBack folder

Check the task execution status:

Get-ScheduledTask regidlebackup | Get-ScheduledTaskInfo

check the registry backup task state

Note that there is no option to get an older version of the registry files because the registry backup task always overwrites the previous backup.

Now, if Windows does not boot properly and none of the standard recovery methods work (including boot to the last known good configuration and rollback to a previous restore point), you can try replacing the registry files with the versions from the backup. To do this, boot into the WinRE recovery environment, open a command prompt, and run:

xcopy c:\Windows\System32\config\regback c:\Windows\System32\config

In a domain environment, it is possible to enable automatic registry backup on all computers by using a Group Policy that creates a registry parameter with the name EnablePeriodicBackup and the value 1.

Enable automatic registry backup on Windows computers in domain via GPO

In Windows Server 2025, 2022, and 2019, the automatic registry backup is enabled by default.
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1 comment

Tester February 18, 2025 - 9:56 am

Thanks but , I tried it in 24H2 and the registry was saved in the “c:\Windows\System32\config” folder, not the “c:\Windows\System32\config\regback” folder.

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