I am trying to get a clean dos boot into a command prompt so I can transfer some files from my 486 laptop which I loaded dos to save HD space. I tried different bootdisks (dos 6.22, win 95, win me) They all boot to dos on a 1 gighz pc running win2000 and a 466 mhz running win98. But I can't access the c:\ harddrive, everytime I type c: at the A:\ prompt I get "invalid drive specification". I get no problems with these floppy bootdisks with pc's running win95. I am using laplink4 for dos to transfer the files. Thanks for your help. I downloaded 4 win2000 pro floppy bootdisks but I dont know how to use them. I dont have a bootable cd available.

this is due to the fact that you cannot read an NTFS (which XP uses as default) drive from DOS without a driver but i can't remember of hand the address where you can get one.

windows 2000 even

Your best bet would be to place the hard drive into the unit where you want the data. You can always move it back later if you don't need it. Even if you can boot to the hard drive in some type of Dos mode most likely laplink 4 wouldn't be compatible with the boot program or with NTFS.

You can use a free utility called ntfsdos. check it out here. http://download.com.com/3000-2094-10126096.html?tag=lst-0-1

why not just use fdisk on the win98 boot disk and erase the non dos partition?

sorry, that was in bad taste!