It stores more than just that there. CVS uses these to store state about the local sandbox (e.g. where the repository is located). It almost sounds like you've clobbered the data that was supposed to be there and now want to put the correct data back -- otherwise I'm not sure how CVS would be confused about the tags. If you need to alter anything in the CVS directories you are probably doing something wrong. It's usually a much better idea to copy the source files (i.e. everything else but the CVS directories) around, check them in/out, tag them, etc.