Registry backup file question

Welcome to tenforums.

You appear to be talking only about 'backup' files - so it seems the question is whether you've overwritten an old file with another - that they are registry backup files in particular seems irrelevant.

You also say the file you're concerned about is from 2014. As such, surely that would be of no use whatsoever, so its loss would be of no concern.

I'm assuming you've not actually made changes to the registry in use of course.

As a general principle, considering the risk of losing files, I would hope you have a full routine backup scheme in place anyway, so if you had overwritten a file you wanted to keep, you could retrieve it from a backup.

For any further comment I suggest you post a screenshot showing what files you're referring to and where they are. Thanks.

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Backing up the registry is only really useful in very particular circumstances.
Did you know that creating System Restore points creates a registry backup as part of what is secured?

If you double click a .reg file you should see:


- so you'd have to click Run to have it merge.

Creating registry backups isn't a reliable way to back up in general. There's a good chance of creating an inconsistency if restoring a whole registry after a few days, for example.

By all means, if editing the registry, back up specific keys for temporary protection.

But System Restore is a far better complement to disk imaging.
There's a tutorial on scheduling the creation of restore points- I have one created daily automatically.

If you single clicked it that would just select it.. rt clicking would have generated a big context menu.

If you'd double-clicked it .. I've shown you that.

Rt clicking and dragging would have given you a small options menu.
Can't think what you saw..

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FYI:
It used to be that automatic backups of the registry were kept by the O/S- MS stopped that a long time back.
However, that can be reinstated:
Enable Automatic Backup of System Registry when Restart in Windows 10

But as I said, registry backups are only useful in very specific circumstances. There are better ways as I mentioned above.