System recovery via the command line: an alternative to reinstalling Windows.

Often, to restore the operating system, it takes only a couple of simple steps that take a few minutes. But instead of saving a lot of time and effort, the user starts the procedure for reinstalling the system. Accordingly, this entails the installation of drivers and all programs. There is even a whole cohort of people whose main occupation for the PC is the reinstallation of the Windows OS. And if you just need to work and want to restore the PC as quickly as possible? Then this article is useful. After all, the developers of Windows provided a convenient tool - the recovery console. Anyone who is not afraid of the command line of the times PC DOS 7.0, can cope with this task. Just arm yourself with the usual distribution of the series Windows 2000 / XP / Vista / 7 - and for the cause. Restoring the system through the command line will not be very difficult. We load from the distribution disk and wait for the stage when it will be offered to press the "R" key. Select the installation of the system, which you need to go to, and drive the administrator's password; If you did not specify it during the previous installation, it is empty. Consider the typical faults that allow you to restore the system through the command line.

1. The boot sector of the system HDD that is damaged by malicious software.

Perhaps, one of the simplest variants of a malfunction. Just load the Recovery Console from the distribution and in the console we type only 2 commands - fixboot and fixmbr.
In addition, there is often a problem with absent ntldr and ntdetect.com files, they must necessarily be. They can be found on the distribution in the i386 folder. Copy them to disk C: \

2. The boot.ini file missing in the root of the C: \ drive

Just run the bootcgf command with the rebuild key, adding the found operating systems to this file. Restoring the system through the command line is simply elementary. Each advanced user is able to carry out this action.

3. The system board was reinstalled, and the system does not boot after this procedure, issuing a BSOD with a code terminating at 7B

If you do not have a more convenient tool (say, ERD Commander) at hand, then you can do with the Recovery Console. We get the list of services with the LISTSVC command, and with the ENABLE command we start the system start of services amdide, amdsata, amdxata, atapi, intelide, msahci, pciide. This activates the download of standard drivers and will allow the old system to start on the basis of new hardware.

4. Installing an incorrect driver or service (malware) resulted in the inability of the system to boot.

Most often, you can limit yourself to just a safe mode and backup the previous restore point, but sometimes, when the restore point simply does not exist, and the corresponding service is disabled. Then you need to go to the Recovery Console and type the command LISTSVC - a list of all the services present in the registry. Thus, we learn the name of the faulty driver we need. After all, it happens that you can install an incorrectly written device driver and you may need to restore the system through the command line. Disable the DISABLE command "ServiceName". It should be remembered that often malicious software makes a substitution of the system driver, for example tcpip.sys or the driver of the network card (ndis.sys), and often without loss of efficiency! Then you should rewrite the original file in the root of the C: \ drive and compare it with the size of the imposter. If they do not match, safely make a replacement with the command "copy" in the directory C: \ windows \ system32 \ drivers.

5. Corrupted registry hive file

Symptoms of the problem are as follows: you see a black screen where the kernel of the system reports that SYSTEM / SOFTWARE is missing or damaged. Perhaps this is the most bad problem, if there is no backup of the registry. And if the problem affected SOFTWARE, then you need to restore all the registry entries concerning the installation of programs - that is, in effect, reinstall the system. A more optimistic scenario is a damaged SYSTEM. Just type in the Recovery Console team:

Cd repair
Copy SYSTEM C: \ windows \ system32 \ config

Reboot and wait until the system finds all the devices. It is necessary to manually "show" the system where the driver files lie (C: \ windows \ system32 \ drivers).

Here are the main problems and ways to solve them, if you decide to restore the system from the command line. Of course, there are other, more complex problems or their combinations, but they can be overcome, thanks to the tools it allows. You can also use the specialized software Hiren's Boot CD and ERD Commander, which have in their arsenal a much larger number of powerful specialized utilities, as well as their numerous clones, but the recovery console is the foundation that must be able to use a service engineer or an experienced user. After all, restoring the system using the command line is much quicker.