I have to be able to back up important files from one of my PCs that has gotten a virus or Trojan that corrupted the ability to drop and drag files from My Documents (and other places). What I need is the DOS command to copy files from My Documents to an external USB hard drive (K:). I am a Computer grad (2 yrs) but the DOS class we had dealt with the very basics and it has been 6 years since I have done anything significant in DOS. A friend of mine is suggesting s Linux mount drive. I just think a simple DOS command would be easier since it would bypass the corrupted Windows XP pro OS. Thankful for any help you can lend. ~Adumelial~

XP is not DOS. Are you suggesting booting in DOS? Or are you hoping to run XP and use the prompt to copy files? ===================================== Helping others achieve escape felicity M2

If you want to do this from actual dos, it would be quite difficult. First of all you would most likely need a usb hard drive and a ntfs driver for dos, xcopy or the like for dos and even then it may not be able to read the file names if 8.3 has been disabled in xp. On top of this your backup would likely be truncated to 8.3 file names....... If it's actually the command prompt(not dos, actually a subsystem on nt based windows that mimics a dos box) then there is no guarantee that it will work at either because the virus could also have damaged or removed vital components. If it is xp this *may* be what your looking for: xcopy "%userprofile%\my documents" "k:\my documents" /e /v /i /g /h /-y It will assume the default location for "my documents" (which could have been changed....) and only attempts to backup the current user........ All that said I think your friend had a very good idea, provided you can boot a live linux cd that supports at least your usb and hard disk configuration it wouldn't be very difficult at all. It also has the advantage of not allowing the virus to run and do any more damage. An ubuntu live cd would probably make this very easy...... Batch Variable how to

Thank-you so much for the clarification on DOS. At this point I am stretching for any workable scenario. Another idea my friend had was to take the infected HD and put it as a slave in another desktop on my network. Then use an external USB HD also to the same desktop to be able to drag and drop the files from the (infected) slave drive to the external USB HD. I would like to learn more about the Ubuntu method for perhaps future use. I have diddled a tad with different Linux versions. Are there directions to configure Ubuntu at the download site for what I would want to use it for?

The reason I mentioned ubuntu is because it's a very easy distro to use, burn the downloaded iso using nero or another burning program. Boot from the cd (you may have to change boot order in bios) select "try ubuntu without any changes" and in will boot a os from the cd. You should be able to back up your files from there (your hard disk should be on the top bar under "places>removable media". Just about any distro will work. The only thing that I can see that may cause problems would be you processor - if it is an ia64 then you will need a distro that specifically supports it, if it is a x86-64(also called amd64 - intel does use it as well) then either a x86-64 or 32 bit distro will work. I'm not sure if ubuntu has a ia64 release..... Slaving up the drive in another machine should also work, but I would recommend that the machine has an up to date antivirus and taking it off the network before you start. It would also be a good idea to do a scan after the drive is installed in an attempt to prevent infecting another pc. Batch Variable how to

"Another idea my friend had was to take the infected HD and put it as a slave in another desktop on my network. Then use an external USB HD also to the same desktop to be able to drag and drop the files from the (infected) slave drive to the external USB HD." But depending on what virus you're dealing with, that would be potentially letting it loose on your network. Do you really want to chance that??? As far as using a Linux distro to recover files, the following may help describe the process: http://www.geeks.com/techtips/2009/... While it discusses using SystemRescueCD, it's a lot less intuitive than using something like K3B to burn CD's (and K3B is included with many live distros)...