A recent update on Windows Support website says that starting from Windows 10 April 2018 Update (also known as Windows 10, version 1803), Windows no longer automatically backs up the system registry to the RegBack folder. This came as a shock to many of Windows 10 users as this was thought to be a serious and long-running bug in the platform. After this announcement, it was clear that this was in fact not a bug, but it was a design change.
Announcement regarding Windows 10 April 2018 Update
Ghacks had initially brought this to every Windows 10 user that the system was not creating Registry Backups anymore. This was considered as a bug because the scheduled task to create the backups was still running. Even the run result indicated that the operation completed successfully and the user could see each registry hive. However, each file was 0kb in size.
This problem was first noticed back in October 2018. Since then there was no update from Microsoft until a few days back. Microsoft announced on the Windows Support website that this was, in fact, a design change that was intended to help reduce the overall disk footprint size of Windows.
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Microsoft also mentions on the website,
If you browse to the \Windows\System32\config\RegBack folder in Windows Explorer, you will still see each registry hive, but each file is 0kb in size.
Why is this worrying everyone?
Backing up a registry is a crucial last line of defense for many businesses and everyday users. If the Windows System Restore point fails and the Windows 10 user does not have any third-party backup software, the registry backup is all you have. And yet Microsoft has now spelled out what was actually happening since the Windows 10 April 2018 Update.
The Windows 10 April 2018 Update was released in October and, despite the issue being flagged to Microsoft in its Feedback Hub service at the time, only now is the company coming clean about what happened. Ironically, this disclosure comes just two months after Microsoft pledged to give Windows 10 users more “control, quality and transparency”.