registry

When I try to back up my registry the program stops responding while trying to access the files. This is not the normal time it takes to access the files, it hangs and I eventually have to reboot. This happens using arcada software, msbackup, or the cfgback that comes on the win95 cd. Arcada works fine to backup the entire hard drive but not when I say to include the registry as part of the backup. What could be the problem? Running scandisk and running microsoft regclean cleans the registry but the problem is still there.Once in a while,while waiting during cfgback, to see if it will work the system will just reboot itself.