User Guide

ERD Commander 2005
User’s Guide
Winternals Software Page 1
1 Welcome to ERD Commander 2005
When your Windows NT 4.0®, Windows 2000®, Windows XP®, or Windows
Server 2003® system becomes unbootable and you’ve exhausted the
recovery options available with the operating system, you can rely on ERD
Commander 2005 to provide full access to your dead system with a familiar
Windows-like environment. ERD Commander 2005 also provides a powerful
set of tools to help you quickly diagnose and repair the problem that is
preventing your system from booting or running properly.
Like the Windows Recovery Console provided with Microsoft Windows since
Windows 2000, and also like previous versions of ERD Commander, ERD
Commander 2005 makes any Windows NT/2000/XP/Server 2003 file system
accessible, including FAT, FAT32 and NTFS. Unlike those other utilities, ERD
Commander 2005 offers both a graphical windowing environment and a
command-line console.
ERD Commander 2005 includes numerous utilities such as a service and
driver manager, registry editor, Explorer-like file system browser, Notepad-
like text editor, Event Viewer, and local password changer so that you can
gain access to accounts from which you’ve been locked out. ERD
Commander 2005 also includes tools that allow you to roll back Windows
hotfixes or service packs, diagnose the driver responsible for a system crash,
find potential malware applications automatically launching with Windows,
and securely erase volumes or hard disks.
When you need to save files to another system on the network or to copy files
from another system as part of the repair process, ERD Commander 2005
gives you full access to network file shares. Additionally, when building an
ERD Commander 2005 CD, you may include the Remote Recover™ 3.0
client, for use with the Administrator's Pak Remote Recover tool.