The Recovery Console is a feature of the
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was official ...
,
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was release to manufacturing, released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Wind ...
and
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 is the sixth version of Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, ...
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 GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows User (computing), users to Human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through graphical icon (comp ...
. The recovery console is used to provide a way to access the hard drive in an emergency through the command prompt.
As such, the Recovery Console can be accessed either through the original installation media used to install Windows, or it can also be installed to the hard drive and added to the
NTLDR menu. However, relying on the latter is much more risky because it requires that the computer can boot to the point that NTLDR loads, or else it would not work at all.
Abilities
The Recovery Console has a simple
command-line interpreter
A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive command (computing), commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invokin ...
(or CLI). Many of the available
commands
Command may refer to:
Computing
* Command (computing), a statement in a computer language
* COMMAND.COM, the default operating system shell and command-line interpreter for DOS
* Command key, a modifier key on Apple Macintosh computer keyboards
* ...
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
Rename may refer to:
* Rename (computing), rename of a file on a computer
* RENAME (command), command to rename a file in various operating systems
* Rename (relational algebra), unary operation in relational algebra
* Company renaming, 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
A master boot record (MBR) is a special type of boot sector at the very beginning of partitioned computer mass storage devices like fixed disks or removable drives intended for use with IBM PC-compatible systems and beyond. The concept of MB ...
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
The following is a list of the Recovery Console
internal
Internal may refer to:
* Internality as a concept in behavioural economics
*Neijia, internal styles of Chinese martial arts
*Neigong
Neigong, also spelled ''nei kung'', ''neigung'', or ''nae gong'', refers to any of a set of Chinese breathing, ...
commands:
*
attrib
* batch
*
bootcfg (introduced in Windows XP)
*
cd
*
chdir
*
chkdsk
*
cls
*
copy
*
del
*
delete
*
dir
* disable
*
diskpart
* enable
*
exit
*
expand
* fixboot
* fixmbr
*
format
Format may refer to:
Printing and visual media
* Text formatting, the typesetting of text elements
* Paper formats, or paper size standards
* Newspaper format, the size of the paper page
Computing
* File format, particular way that informati ...
*
help
* listsvc
* logon
* map
*
md
*
mkdir
The mkdir (make directory) command in the Unix, DOS, DR FlexOS, IBM OS/2, Microsoft Windows, and ReactOS operating systems is used to make a new directory. It is also available in the EFI shell and in the PHP scripting language. In DOS, OS/2, ...
*
more
*
rd
*
ren Ren or REN may refer to:
Abbreviations
* Orenburg Tsentralny Airport, IATA code REN, civil airport in Russia
* Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN), Portuguese company
* Renanthera, abbreviated as Ren, orchid genus
* Ringer equivalence number ( ...
*
rename
Rename may refer to:
* Rename (computing), rename of a file on a computer
* RENAME (command), command to rename a file in various operating systems
* Rename (relational algebra), unary operation in relational algebra
* Company renaming, rename ...
*
rmdir
*
set (introduced in Windows XP)
* systemroot
*
type
Type may refer to:
Science and technology Computing
* Typing, producing text via a keyboard, typewriter, etc.
* Data type, collection of values used for computations.
* File type
* TYPE (DOS command), a command to display contents of a file.
* Ty ...
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
*
Emergency Repair Disk
*''For information about generic boot/recovery discs, see Recovery disc''
A Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain ...
*
Comparison of command shells
A command shell is a command-line interface to interact with and manipulate a computer's operating system.
General characteristics
Interactive features
Background execution
Background execution allows a shell to run a command without us ...
References
External links
Description of the Recovery Console
{{Windows commands
Windows components
Windows command shells