So I’m trying to make a recovery disk using Bart PE.  My Windows Vista (I know, I know, mock me later) boot partition is HOSED and I can’t get in to Windows.  So I thinks to meself, “this ’ere Bart PE ’as a plugin fer Disk Commander, I wonder if’n that’ll help.”  Turns out Disk Commander used to be sold by Winternals.  (You probably knew that already.)  If you google for it, you will find a zillion links to all sorts of versions that all take you here.  Yay.  Not helpful.

So, reading “Customers looking for desktop diagnostic and recovery tools,” I dutifully click the link, which takes me to the Microsoft Windows Enterprise home page.  Not helpful.

If I had only read the second half of that sentence, I would have saved myself considerable grief:  “Customers looking for desktop diagnostic and recovery tools similar to Administrator’s Pak should refer to the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack.”

In fact:  Disk Commander is part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP).  Actually, it’s part of the Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) which is part of the MDOP, and it is called ERD Commander.

There’s a very Windows 7-ish TechNet site devoted to MDOP.  Which didn’t help me much because I needed the Vista version.

It turns out that the XP, Vista and Win7 versions of MDOP are all available for “trial” in MSDN.  Listed as “Desktop Optimization Pack” in the “Servers” category.  (As of this writing.)

I think the MDOP 2007 is XP, MDOP 2008 is Vista and MDOP 2009 is Win7.

Woohoo.  Mischief managed.