Introducing Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE)

The Windows Recovery Environment (aka Windows RE) team would use this blog to share information, tricks and tips about Windows RE with support professionals and end-users of Windows. We would also like to use this blog to get feedback from the community.

So what is Windows RE?

Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) is a recovery platform based on Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE). Windows RE provides two main functionalities:

1. Automatic diagnosis and repair of boot problems using a tool called Startup Repair.

2. A centralized platform for advanced recovery tools.

We will explain more about these two functions in upcoming posts.

Windows RE is new for Windows Vista and completely replaces the recovery console in Windows XP. You should be able to perform most tasks of recovery console from Windows RE.

How can end-users get access to Windows RE and Startup Repair?

For Vista RC1 release, Windows RE is available on the Windows installation DVD. To access Windows RE, boot using the installation DVD, choose your language settings and hit "Next" and then click on "Repair Your Computer" link at the bottom of the screen. This will launch Windows RE. After choosing an OS to repair, you should see all the recovery tools available in Windows RE.

After Windows Vista releases, Windows RE will be available via other convenient means as well. For example, OEMs may pre-install Windows RE on the hard disk and corporations (SA) can make Windows RE available for network boot via a WDS server.

 

So that's Windows RE in a nutshell. Watch this space for information on how to use Windows RE and Startup Repair to fix unbootable computers.

-Parveen