I have a major problem. My son owns a Dell Laptop running Windows XP. Several weeks ago he couldn’t boot windows. I attempted to boot to a Windows 98 Startup disk and that worked. I can get to the C: drive OK in DOS Mode (the problem is probably in the boot sector of the drive, I guess). I’ve tried copying some small files to floppy and that seems to work. The key question is if I plug in an external drive into the USB port, how do I get DOS to support it so I can transfer very large files like his .pst and powerpoint file(s)? Any help provided would be greatly appreciated. LewisK PS. I tried to purchase an external USB enclosure, place the bad drive in it and connect it to another working WinXP system. It recognized the drive, however, when I try to access it I get a message that says “unrecognizable filesystem”

You are having a problem with the partition type.. Windows 98 is more likely Fat32 and the Windoww XP is more likely NTFS.. In order to see the contents of the Windows XP hard drive.. you need to attach that hard drive to a system with the same file type.