Recovery Console

Recovery Console is a diagnostic tool included on the Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 installation media and implemented by  that can be used to repair system errors that prevent booting into the full Windows environment. It is a command line interface designed to resemble the Command Prompt and other console Windows utilities, however, they don't share any code and there are many differences between the Windows and Recovery Console versions of the same utilities.

History
The Recovery Console was introduced with Windows 2000.

Since it is a command-line interpreter, it contains an interface that is very similar to Command Prompt's, and it contains the basic commands from it, such as ,  , and  , that are designed for troubleshooting.

Windows XP and Server 2003's Recovery Consoles are not much different from 2000's, but they added some new commands, such as.

Installation
The Recovery Console is primarily used from the setup disc. However, it can also be installed to the hard disk by using the  command. Upon a confirmation, the setup installs the Recovery Console to  and adds appropriate entries to.

Replacement
Windows Vista replaced the Recovery Console with the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE), which provided more advanced options that replaced those from Recovery Console. For instance, Startup Repair on WinRE replaced  and   (they can still be executed on Command Prompt separately, though), while other commands such as   could still be run from a native Command Prompt window. WinRE also had the ability to run other diagnostic tools like System Restore, which were already present on supported Windows XP Recovery Console versions but not available for execution.

Commands
There are some internal commands that can be used in the Recovery Console:



Apparently, there is also a  command, according to   and some documentations from Microsoft. However, it actually doesn't exist.