Calling All Msdos Wizards

HELP!

my pc is totally fubar - the hard disk has some big problems and windows xp will not load.

i can get a dos prompt however.

i have very valuable data (& sensitive) records regarding my trading activities (et al - cookies, passwords etc) so i dont want to take it down the road and have them salvage the data - chance of it getting in wrong hands.

so i want to know how i can access my files (word & excel files mostly - also few pdf's) so i can coppy them on to another drive/ removeable media.

if i type dir *.* i just see a load of system files and no directories.

i want to be able to find the path to my files (mostly in mydocuments folder) so i can copy them over.

any ideas (or other solutions??)

cheers

charlie

E mail Chartman. He knows a thing or two about comps.

When your PC was working did you password protect your username to get into Windows ? If you did then you will have difficulty accessing data other than through Windows itself. If you didnt then you could take the hard disk out and slave it to another machine which would then allow you to access the data as it will just appear as another drive.

Most personal data is saved in the My Documents folder but in reality for Windows XP the full path name for this is

C:\Documents and Settings\your user name\My Documents

So if you log on as Charlie then the path would be:

C:\Documents and Settings\Charlie\My Documents\

For emails in Outlook Express then the path is even more complex and will be something like

C:\Documents and Settings\Charlie\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\?????????\Microsoft\Outlook Express

Where ??????????? = a long name for a folder that is something like this {B535D0XX-6426-45F4-841E-13E6A91C03A1}

I am not sure that this will help much but it shows that the directories for the information you need are not straight forward in WIndows XP.


Paul

charliechan,

try "tree", to see the directory structures and the files within that structure.

use "help" to see all the viable command prompts and their descrips.

hope that helps.

also,

enter "help" [command-name] to get a descrip of the proper useage of the command.

cheers folks

Better still boot up with something like Super WinPE and access your files via a normal XP interface )

Have you tried a repair?

JonnyT

thanx for the reply jonnyt. i have no idea what super winpe is to be honest. remember the hard drive (or some sectors) seem to be cream crackered.

i also tried the other stuff. tree is not recognised. seems like i have a limited set of commands to use.

neither can i access the directories that were mentioned above.

i have found out how to get round the xp passwords though - its in the dell handbook. ive got to open the case and flick some switches (called jumpers) and that should do it.

a mate also suggested reinstalling xp - there is some restore feature on the start up apparently.