Useful or a liability, depending on your circumstances.

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The Windows Recovery Environment is essentially a small operating system that can be run independently to the main Windows OS, from where it is possible to access backup or repair tools to restore or to fix a problem system. It comes included on and can be run from the Vista and Win7/8 install DVDs and is capable of detecting and auto repairing boot problems, as well as letting you run System Restore and other tools from the command line. In 7 and 8 you can also use Windows Backup to restore a complete operating system from an image backup. Also in Win7 and 8 it will by default be on the hard drive, either within Windows or on a separate system partition, from where it can be started manually, or automatically if there is a Windows boot failure.

There are many things that can disable the onboard WinRE and because it shares many of the same bootfiles as Windows it can be exactly the time that people are wanting to use it to repair a broken Windows that they find it is also broken. If you are using the Windows bootmanager, or the image backup, or System Restore, or just want to be able to get to a command line, then to retain the ability to use WinRE you should ensure that you have it on bootable media. If you don't have a full Windows install DVD/USB then you can make your own dedicated WinRE bootdisk or flash device. See this section on our old site for how to do that.

Not Required?
If on the other hand you have configured your machine to multiboot with a third-party bootmanager and you have your own fool-proof system of back-up and restore, which precludes you from ever having to try and repair a buggy or damaged Windows install, then you will have no need of WinRE. What's more the auto repair routines may not be to our advantage when they try to restore native Windows boot configurations and put the Windows boot manager back in charge. There is a good possibility that our multibooting modifications will have already disabled WinRE's ability to auto-run, but if not it may be desirable to make sure it is disable in Windows so that there is never any danger of it popping up and in its efforts actually destroying our perfectly functioning machine.

Disable WinRE
Open a command box with Administrator privileges and enter: - reagentc /disable - and if it works you should get the message 'Operation Successful'. If instead you get any type of error message it likely means that WinRE was already dysfunctional.

You should of course do this inside all new-generation Windows operating systems you have on your multiboot machine.

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What is Windows RE?
How Windows RE Works.
www.sepago.de - Windows Recovery Environment Explained.
www.terabyteunlimited.com - Repairing WinRE.