Section 1.8: The Recovery Console

The Recovery Console is a command-line interface that can be used to perform a variety of troubleshooting and recovery tasks on the local computer. These tasks include:

• Starting and stopping services;

• Reading and writing data on a local drive; and

• Formatting hard disks.

1.8.1: Installing and Starting the Recovery Console

You can install the Recovery Console from the Windows Server 2003 Installation CD by running the winnt32 command with the /cmdcons switch from the command prompt. After Recovery Console is installed, you can access it from the Please Select Operating System To Start menu. You can also use the Windows Server 2003 Installation CD to start your computer and then select the Recovery Console option when you are prompted to choose repair options.

Note: You can instruct the Windows Server 2003 Setup program to install the Recovery Console when you install Windows Server 2003 by installing Windows Server 2003 with the winnt command and adding the /e and /cmdcons switches. The /e switch specifies that the Windows Server 2003 Setup program must run a command after the final stage of the installation of Windows Server 2003 is finished and the /cmdcons switch specifies that the command must install the recovery console onto the hard drive. The full command would be similar to this: winnt/e:z:i386winnt/cmdcons

1.8.2: Using the Recovery Console

The Recovery Console provides you with a limited set of DOS-based administrative commands that you can use to repair your Windows Server 2003 installation. A list of the Recovery Console commands is shown in Table 1.2. Before you can use these commands, however, you must supply the password for the local

Administrator account.

Table 1.2: Some Recovery Console Commands

Command	Description
attrib	Changes the attribute of the selected file or folder
chdir or cd	Displays the name of the current folder or changes the current folder
chkdsk	Checks a hard drive and displays a status report
copy	Copies a single file from a stiffy drive or CD-Rom drive to the hard drive
delete or del	Deletes one or more files
dir	Displays a list of files and subfolders in a folder
diskpart	Launches the disk partitioning utility
disable	Disables the specified service or a device driver
enable	Starts or enables the specified service or a device driver
exit	Exits the Recovery Console and restarts your computer
fdisk	Manages partitions on your hard disks
fixboot	Writes a new partition boot sector onto the system partition
fixmbr	Repairs the master boot record of the partition boot sector
format	Formats a disk
help	Lists all of the Recovery Console commands
listsvc	Lists the device drivers and services that are currently installed on the computer. Use this command to identify the service or device driver that you want to disable or enable
logon	Takes you back to the first prompt of the Recovery Console so you can choose another installation to repair
map	Displays the drive letter mappings currently in place
mkdir [drive:]path or md [drive:]path	Creates a folder at the specified path on the specified drive
rmdir [drive:]path or rd [drive:]path	Deletes the folder at the specified path on the specified drive. You cannot delete a folder is it contains files or subfolders.
rename or ren	Renames a single file
systemroot	Sets the current folder to the systemroot folder of the system that you are currently logged on to
type	Displays the content of the specified text file