#TBT: Making changes to critical (and less critical) system files

This post originally ran in April 2008. I am reposting it now, as part of my throwback thursday project, to give some of my older quality posts some love. The practice outlined below is one I follow to this day, and I still recommend it to anyone who cares to listen. It has saved my hide more times than I care to remember, and for that reason alone deserves getting dusted off.

From time to time, you might want or even need to make changes to system files that are more or less critical. This can be risky business, and as a result, it is always smart to make the changes in a non-operative version of the file, then back up the file, and only then implement the new version.
A practical example; You want to change the OEM-info of your computer. The way you do this is first to locate and make a copy of the OEMINFO.ini-file, then make the changes in the copy. Once you’re done, you rename the OEMINFO.ini-file to OEMINFO.ini_old, and only then do you actually implement the new file, copying it back in.

Backup and new file

The reason for this is twofold; firstly you’ll not be screwing up anything while editing, and should something go wrong, it’ll be that much simpler to roll back; simply rename the original file and you’re back up and running.


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