The Windows Recovery Environment (aka Windows RE aka WinRE) team would use this blog to share information, tricks and tips about WinRE 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 WinRE?

Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) is a recovery platform based on Windows Preinstallation Encironment (WinPE). WinRE 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.

WinRE 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 WinRE.

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

For Vista RC1 release, WinRE is available on the Windows installation DVD. To access WinRE, 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 WinRE. After choosing an OS to repair, you should see all the recovery tools available in WinRE.

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

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

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