Hello, first my situation: yesterday, i took a small nap leaving my laptop on, thinking I will get to the project (that I am working on) after an hour or so.... well, when I got back to my workstation, (my laptop), all I saw was a black screen doing the following activity: (between "=====") ========================== Intel UNDI, PXE-2.0 (build 082) For realtek RTL8139(X)/8130/810X PCI Fast Ethernet Controller v2.13 (020326) CLIENT MAC ADDR: 00 02 3F 6B 5D 72 GUID: 3CAC840B-3FF2-11D8-A767-00023F6B5D72 DHCP...\|/_ [<---Animation] ========================== After the Animation: ======================= PXE-E53: no boot filename received PXE-M0F: EXITING PXE ROM ======================= What I am trying to do: I am trying every possible way i know to salvage the data... all i care is my 5-10 files (20 kbs each i think).... other than that, I have nothing that I would die over. So far, all my ways have failed. I tried using a bootable CD -- Knoppix -- but the problem is that it would not recognize my external floppy drive. Then I tried using a jumpdrive (usb 512 MB from Memorex).... i could not copy and paste the files from my windows hd to the jumpdrive. So I would like to ask: What can I do from here? (where should i go from here?) is there a linux distro you guys are aware of that will run from the CD and ALSO support my external Floppy drive, so that I can salvage my 5-10 files?? (again, 20 kbs each...) PS: I would like to add this small detail: I was running two things when I left the laptop on: Real Player and Microsoft Visual Basic 6 Any/All help appreciated! thanks guys, -BC

Another detail: I went to BIOS (during start up) and checked the boot order... it's like this: Floppy CD HD Network LAN Most important thing: I have GOBack v3 (from Roxio) installed on my computer. everytime I try to start, the screen stalls at the GoBack's White screen... and does nothing further for like 1 hr (that's the maximum recorded time... after that I shutdowned the computer). -BC

My fourth observation: When I turn on my laptop, and continue on to load windows... the more I keep the GoBack Screen the more my laptop gets heated on the right side (where you input the ethernet cable). While running Linux (Knoppix) from CD, it dosent get even warm... let alone "hot" -BC

If you were able to read the drive from within Knoppix, you had it 90% solved! Keep in mind that there's more ways to retrieve data than just copying it to your floppy drive. How about your CDRW (if it has one)? Did networking work under Knoppix? It should have. If so, why not just grab the files and FTP them to another location? Heck, you could even e-mail them as attachments to yourself! Knoppix has a very good track record for the network part "just working" so that's what direction I'd go in. Good luck! Rob Pectol http://rob.pectol.com/

Thanks Rob for your reply and help YES, I can access my folders and files :) I tried doing email to myself... no luck I tried using my school (university) email account this technique does not work. As far as the networking go... what excatly are you suggesting that I should do? I have never made "networks" although i have two computers at home (the laptop that is screwed up... and this computer that I am currently using to ask help) As for the FTP: I did not find any program in knoppix that is an FTP application...(did i miss something?) Also, the CDRW (CD Drive drive) cannot be used since that's the only drive I have which currently holds the Knoppix CD... without which I cannot run my computer so i cannot take that out. so that's why i was more confident about the Floppy solution,... Any further help please? Anyone? -BC

Oh forgot to add: The reason I cannot email it to myself is because it's Visual Basic Source code files.... so any .bas (module file) are probably being regarded as "malacious" But like I said before, I CAN ACCESS the hard drive through knoppix ;) so any help? -BC

Simply open a console window and you should have access to a command line FTP client. Try typing, "ftp someplace.com" and provided that you have network connectivity, it should open an FTP connection to the location specified. However, this would be my second solution. First I'd go the e-mail route. It's common for companies and ISPs to block attachments with certain file extensions so I can see your troubles there. However, I happen to administer a family domain including a mailserver. If you'd like, I could create you a temporary e-mail account on it and disable the file extension checking. Once you are successful in getting the files e-mailed to it, you could then login from your working system and retrieve them. If you'd like to give that a try, e-mail me directly and I'll e-mail you back with the login credentials. I can be contacted via my Website: http://rob.pectol.com/ Let me know. Rob Pectol http://rob.pectol.com/