# BartPE -- a bootable recovery environment



## Rollin' Rog (Dec 9, 2000)

I am just getting familiar with this great utility, and it definitely has my seal of approval:

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

It was actually a breeze to create using a retail XP Pro SP2 CD that I had.

But you can create it easily if you have XP SP1 or later installed (it will search for the files it needs).

If you have an OEM XP CD, like Dell -- you may need to read the FAQ and install the "fix Dell" plugin to avoid an error.

What does it do?

Well forget the Windows Recovery Console

Bart's Portable Windows Environment is something like a "Safe Mode" Windows boot with a basic file manager instead of Explorer. You will have access to all the essential uncompressed cabinet files and all your drives so that files can be replaced or data copied out for recovery.

You can even configure networking support if you have broadband. There is a Firefox plugin that can be installed.

Some, but not all your installed programs can be run if you know where to find the executables using the File Manager or Task Manager. It's also possible to create customized plugins -- for the advanced users.

Be sure to download and install the free Deep Burner plugin so that you can burn to CD files you want to recover if necessary. Floppy access is also present. No USB access though.

The only nit I had to pick with it is that if you left the CD in and rebooted -- you ended up back in Bart. If you took it out, you could not shutdown from menu, but you could manually power off. Ctrl-alt-del did not work.

For me the best method was to just leave the CD in, restart, and select Dell's F12 menu which permitted selecting the Hard Drive to boot back into.


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## Stoner (Oct 26, 2002)

It is also possible to install Barts to a hard drive and dual boot it along with XP.

I have gone online with Barts, but I saved a portable version of Firefox to the hard drive instead, and just run it from that folder.


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## Rollin' Rog (Dec 9, 2000)

Yeah I noticed he gave instructions for that; it works kind of like having the "recovery console" in your boot menu. 

Of course if you have serious hard drive corruption -- you still need the CD.


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