mlschelpat

Thanks for responses "Stay calm" & "Power". I was having other issues also that, I discovered, preceded the registry backup (self caused because I tinker with my PC a lot) so I just did a clean (re)install. For what it's worth: my event logging tasks wouldn't start and numerous searches for Win 7 log issues asked if a registry cleaner had been used so I was trying to restore my registry to an earlier date. They never specifically said that a Reg cleaner caused the problem and I had used Ccleaner's numerous times in the past with no problems. Since the registry merge wasn't working for me I restored a system backup much older than the oldest registry backup and "oh crap" the log wasn't working then either. There was no solution to be found to fix the Windows logging task failures other than reinstall so that's what I did. I'm using a program "EAZ-FIX" now and I'm taking a snapshot before I install every program or make any changes and then I test the log functions. If I find the culprit I'll go back to the last good snapshot and can the culprit. Finally when I get all of my software reinstalled and before I do any registry cleaning I'll take a good backup. Funny thing was I didn't really need the event log. I was just curious about what it contained when I discovered it wasn't working. C'est la vie.

I still get "Cannot import: ... "Error Accessing the Registry" even though I'm in the registry (I made a change in hkey_local_machine to insure I had authority).

That is the error I get after right clicking the backup file, selecting MERGE then replying OK to warning message. Windows 7. I'm the only user so I have administrator privilege. registry editor error message.rtf