From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Microsoft Windows feature
The
Recovery Console
is a feature of the
Windows 2000
,
[1]
Windows XP
[2]
and
Windows Server 2003
operating systems. It provides the means for administrators to perform a limited range of tasks using a
command-line interface
.
Its primary function is to enable administrators to recover from situations where Windows does not
boot
as far as presenting its
graphical user interface
. The recovery console is used to provide a way to access the hard drive in an emergency through the command prompt.
The Recovery Console can be accessed in two ways, either through the original installation media used to install Windows, or by installing it onto the hard drive and adding it to the
NTLDR
menu. However, the latter option is much more risky than the former one because it requires that the computer can boot to the point that NTLDR loads, or else the Recovery Console will not work at all.
[3]
Abilities
[
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]
The Recovery Console has a simple
command-line interpreter
(or CLI). Many of the available
commands
closely resemble the commands that are normally available in
cmd.exe
, namely
attrib
,
copy
,
del
, and so forth.
From the Recovery Console an administrator can:
- create and remove directories, and copy, erase, display, and
rename
files
- enable and disable services (which modifies the service control database in the registry, to take effect when the system is next bootstrapped)
- repair boot file, using the
bootcfg
command
- write a new
master boot record
to a disk, using the
fixmbr
command
- write a new
volume boot record
to a volume, using the
fixboot
command
- format volumes
- expand files from the compressed format in which they are stored on the installation
CD-ROM
- perform a full
chkdsk
scan to repair corrupted disks and files, especially if the computer cannot be started properly
Filesystem access on the Recovery Console is by default severely limited. An administrator using the Recovery Console has only read-only access to all volumes except for the
boot volume
, and even on the boot volume only access to the root directory and to the Windows system directory (e.g. \WINNT). This can be changed by changing Security Policies to enable read/write access to the complete file system including copying files from removable media (i.e. floppy drives).
Commands
[
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]
The following is a list of the Recovery Console
internal
commands:
[1]
[2]
Although it appears in the list of commands available by using the
help
command, and in many articles about the Recovery Console (including those authored by Microsoft), the
net
command is not available. No protocol stacks are loaded, so there is no way to connect to a
shared folder
on a remote computer as implied.
See also
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]
References
[
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]
External links
[
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]
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File system navigation
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File management
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Archiving
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Disk management
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Processes
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Registry
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User environment
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File contents
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Scripting
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Networking
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Maintenance and care
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Boot management
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Software development
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Miscellaneous
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