We all have heard of the linux distributions that could be booted from a CD, now we can do the same thing with Windows. It’s called BartPE (BART Pre-installed Enviroment). It will give you a complete Win32 environment with network support, a graphical user interface (800×600) and FAT/NTFS/CDFS filesystem support. Very handy for burn-in testing systems with no OS, rescuing files to a network share, virus scan and much more. It runs on Windows 2000/XP/2003/BartPE. It does not run on Windows NT4/ME/9x.
Here’s a little caveat from the website.. “PE Builder is not a Microsoft product and does not create Microsoft Windows Pre-installation Environment (“WinPE”). Using PE Builder does not grant you a license to Microsoft WinPE or to use the Windows XP or Server 2003 binaries in a manner other than stated in the End-User License Agreement included in your version of Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. Microsoft has not reviewed or tested PE Builder and does not endorse its use.”