Long Zheng takes a look at a new administrative tool that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 provides to create a recovery disc:

One of the new administrative tools Windows Vista Service Pack 1 provides is the ability to create a recovery disc. At first, the name might fool you into thinking the type of discs system manufacturers provide to you when you purchase a new computer to restore your computer to a factory state, but this is not that. A more appropriate name would be 'Windows repair disc'.

To be blunt, this tool creates merely a slimmed-down Windows installation disc. It takes a normal Windows installation disc image and strips out all the “installation” functionality leaving only the repair tools and common system files.

What a lot of people don't know (or need to know) is that their Windows Vista DVDs are in fact running Windows PE, an extremely lightweight version of Windows that can be booted from removable media for the purpose of system maintenance. Up until now, creating a Windows PE image was not an easy task. This tool basically simplifies it down to just two clicks.