Working in the Preinstalled Environment Windows administrators will feel comfortable with the menus, dialog boxes, and other UI aspects based on standard Windows APIs, as well as BartPE's many original Windows DLLs and supporting files. BartPE includes a file manager, which lets you browse all the FAT32 or NTFS files on your host computer, and a command prompt, which lets you run many Windows commands.
Figure 1 shows some BartPE interface elements.
While in BartPE, you can view the NTFS permissions on files and folders on a system, but they won't resolve because your preinstalled environment won't have domain recognition. Even though you're running in a Windows-like environment, this environment contains only a subset of Windows features. For example, although you can access all the files on a host system started with BartPE, you can't add users to file permissions, and you'll receive an error message if you try to do so.
In your preinstalled environment, you have full access to the host system's files as well as administrative rights to anything within the environment. For example, if you enabled network support, you can use the Windows net use command to map a drive to another Windows computer and copy files between the systems. Because BartPE runs under its own workstation credentials, you simply need to specify a domain user to access any network credentials just as though you were using a Windows computer outside the domain or workgroup that you're trying to access.
BartPE also includes the Microsoft diskpart.exe partition-analyzing utility, Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection, and of course all the plug-ins you installed. A graphical environment isn't helpful if you can't see or use it, so BartPE lets you adjust your mouse, keyboard, and even your screen resolution so that it's usable, whether you're viewing an old LCD screen in a server room or a 21" monitor with high-resolution capability.
BartPE's robust Windows environment is an effective tool for troubleshooting or accessing unresponsive or damaged Windows computers on your network. Although several Linux preinstalled environment distributions designed for CD-ROM or DVD boot-up are available, they're mostly for security or other niche purposes. I think Windows administrators will find BartPE provides similar utilities in a form that will make them feel immediately at home.