Toolset Checks PC Health, Aids Recovery

The Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DART), part of the Desktop Optimization Pack (DOP), provides tools for diagnosing and repairing unbootable Windows PCs or balky applications, and recovering lost or deleted data. The tools can be run remotely, from a recovery disk, or with a preinstalled recovery client. The latest version, DART 6.0, was released in Oct. 2008 with several new features, including support for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, but it is not compatible with older Windows versions. In addition, before customers can purchase the tools, they must also purchase upgrade and maintenance rights on their PCs.

Rescuing Unbootable PCs

While hardware failures, such as a disk drive crash or motherboard failure, have straightforward repair options, software failures can be more difficult to diagnose and correct. If a PC will not boot, for example, the cause may not be obvious. Reloading the disk from a standard disk image is one way to recover, but some data, including critical files, may be lost and user customization will have to be redone. Reinstalling the OS and applications, which can preserve data files remaining on a disk, can be even more time-consuming and can be complicated further by BitLocker drive encryption, which ties the encryption mechanism to the hardware of the failing computer.