12.7 Windows NT4/2000 Troubleshooting Problems
12.7.5 Windows 2000 Recovery Console
The Windows 2000 Recovery Console is a command-line interface used to perform a variety of troubleshooting and recovery tasks. These include starting and stopping services, reading and writing data on a local drive (including drives that are formatted with the NTFS file system), and formatting hard disks. Once the recovery console has been started, use the commands from the command line to remove, replace, or copy corrupt files.

There is more than one way to start the Recovery Console. The first way is to insert the Windows 2000 CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive and wait for the Microsoft Windows 2000 CD dialog box to open. If it does not start, go to the Run command window on the Start menu and type cmd. This will display the command prompt window. Change to the drive letter of the CD-ROM, then to the I386 folder, and run the winnt32 command with the /cmdcons switch. After the Recovery Console is installed, access it from the "Please Select Operating System To Start" menu. The recovery console can also be started by starting the system with the Windows 2000 setup disks or the CD, and selecting the option when prompted.

FIXMBR and FIXBOOT
The
FIXMBR command can be used with the Recovery Console to fix hard drive problems. The FIXMBR command repairs a master boot record (MBR). The syntax for this command is FIXMBR [Device Name]. If the [Device Name] parameter is omitted, FIXMBR rewrites the MBR on the boot device. A device name can be specified to write a MBR to a different drive (such as a floppy disk or secondary hard disk). Use the MAP command to retrieve a list of device names. An example of a valid device name is \Device\HardDisk0.

The FIXBOOT command writes a new boot sector onto the system partition. The syntax for the command is FIXBOOT [drive:]. It is important to note that if the [drive:] option is not specified, FIXBOOT writes the boot sector to the default boot partition. Specify a different drive if a boot sector is to be written to a volume other than the default boot partition.

Lab Activity  (PDF, 14 KB)
  In this lab, students will learn how to use and implement the Windows 2000 Recovery Console.