Windows itself has one major failure and that is the registry. This registry keeps all the settings for the operating system, the hardware, drivers, and varous components that go into making Windows work.
https://www.ghacks.net/2019/06/29/microsoft-explains-the-lack-of-registry-backups-in-windows-10/
The problem is that this set of files that comprise the registry are no longer being periodically backed up by Windows 10 starting with Version 1803 and all subsequent versions.
In my line of work having to deal with a bad registry can only be resolved by resorting to these backup files. If the computer has a failing hard drive and this causes the registry to corrupt having a good version for the next reboot is important, even if it requires a little manual intervention. Meaning, if I have to copy some files outside the OS to get it to work the next time around that’s sort of acceptable. Windows should be able to do this itself, it should always verify everything and repair anything and everything but it doesn’t. Microsoft makes 3-4 billion a quarter in profit (not gross, but profit) and they should have put in the time to ensure that the registry was safe since historically it has been the cause of some serious issues.
In my work I’ve come across some malicious individuals that will control some person’s computer and when the person gets mad then the bad guys will lock the registry and there’s nothing you can do. Well, a solution is to just back out of it by booting from another source and copying those registry backup files.
Microsoft claims that they removed this to save space on consumer’s drive, however the amount of space it saves is often far less than 100mb. This isn’t a reasonable response until you consider that they have a bunch of cheap surface tablets out there that consumers purchase that don’t have enough storage so saving that 100mb means something, BUT it shouldn’t put consumers that have more than enough storage at risk. This does, it puts everyone at risk either from a failure in the registry or from malicious individuals.
Microsoft needs to adjust this immediately. Since we are at version 1909 this has been in place for over a year. There are an overwhelming number of people that have complained about issues such as “bad system config info” that can no longer recover their computer without a complete reinstall which in many people’s case puts a great burden on them to redo all of their applications.
Now, you can alter the behavior and put it back however the average person is not going to touch the procedure with a 10 foot pole. It involves editing the registry with regedit.exe, locating the point in the registry which is many branches deep and creating a dword 16 value with a specific name and setting it to 1. This would have to be done on every person’s computer manually and that is a significant burden to almost everyone.
This change is unacceptable.
Because I work on a lot of customer computers I decided to export the registry key and copy it to each customer computer that comes into my shop and to import that registry key. I tested this and it works. I’ll try to add it to each customer’s computer as they come in because this needs to be done before a corrupt registry becomes the reason your computer won’t boot.
Below is a copy of the reg key I created. Just copy it and save it as a plain text file and once done right click on the saved file and choose “merge”. Make sure that your text editor doesn’t insert carriage return/line feed at the end of the long lines and include everything below this line.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Configuration Manager]
“EnablePeriodicBackup”=dword:00000001
“BackupCount”=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Configuration Manager\Defrag]
“LastRun”=”01:23:2020”
“TotalBytesSaved”=hex(b):00,40,24,00,00,00,00,00