It's three for three for Winternals Software's ERD Commander, which posts a landslide victory as Best Emergency Recovery Console Utility for the third year in a row. In a decidedly uncrowded field, Quest Software's Aelita ERDisk comes in a distant second, with no third-place contender in sight.
ERD Commander 2003 boots dead servers and workstations from CD-ROM into a Windowslike repair environment, where you can access the system's volumes and diagnose and repair problems with ERD Commander tools. Network access is built in, so you can safely move data to or from the stricken system. Key features include the Locksmith utility, which lets you reset Administrator passwords; FileRestore, which lets you quickly find and recover deleted files; access to XP Restore Points on unbootable Windows XP systems; key information comparison between unbootable and working systems for diagnosis and troubleshooting; and the ability to format and partition disks. ERD Commander 2003 is compatible with Windows 2003/XP/2000/NT.