From Windows Vista Team blog :
... Of all of the calls that I monitor, the one that I find most frustrating (remember, I am in listen-only mode) is the call where the customer's PC just won’t boot. While I know I might be able to fix the PC if I had direct access to it, I know how hard it is for the user to follow a complex set of directions from even the most talented support engineer as they try to diagnose and correct the problem together. I also know that it's even more frustrating for the customer.
I knew we had to tackle this for Windows Vista and I am very proud of the progress we made with a new feature called Windows Recovery Environment or Windows RE. Windows RE is a combination runtime environment, diagnostic tool and repair system that basically tries to do about 80% of what one of the engineers in the Windows support team could do if they came to your home or office and hooked up a debugger up to your PC -- all without you having to do anything.
See also : Windows RE team blog
