Windows XP Recovery Console

The Recovery Console, sometimes casually referred to as repair console, is a tool that can help you to bring your Windows installation back to working order and to manipulate or copy files that cannot be copied while Windows XP runs.

It can be installed from the Windows XP installation CD, but is then not automatically updated by later patches or service packs. So the simpler method is to start it directly by booting from the installation CD and choose the Repair Console.

The user interface of the repair console is a command line prompt. It is
restricted in its abilities, but the restrictions can be lifted with the following self-explanatory commands.

• set allowwildcards = true
• set allowallpaths = true
• set allowremovablemedia = true
• set nocopyprompt = true

However, there is a trap. The SET command is blocked by default, and you have to enable it first by means of a security policy. Unfortunately this is not possible when you need it most, namely when your computer does not boot.

So you have to plan ahead and enable this security policy as long as Windows is still running fine.

You can read the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article for details, but the essential information is that you have to enable the local security policy named:

Recovery Console: Allow floppy copy and access to all drives and all folders.

Description of the SET Command in Recovery Console
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/235364/

If you want to edit a file using the Recovery Console, it is easiest to copy it to a diskette, walk to another computer, edit it there, then copy it back.