Windows XP bootable disk provides an option to boot to the recovery console, which acts like a command prompt on the NTFS file system. The console can be used to run a check disk or a scan disk and multiple other utilities to resolve an issue. It even has an option to run an unattended repair, which is either a parallel installation or a clean installation. The repair option recreates the operating system without causing much data loss. It has to be noted that a repair installation can result in data loss; most likely the user profiles and documents and settings.
A bootable CD can either be a Recovery CD or an Operating system disk. A Recovery CD is a CD-ROM provided that can be used to access the data on the hard disk drive in case of an operating system crash. It is a bootable CD, which provides full functionality to programs that have access to FAT or NTFS partitions. The computer vendor generally provides the Recovery CD.











