Corrupted Laptop - Transfer Data Without My Computer (explorer.exe) Using Command Line

Question

I have a laptop (Toshiba Satellite) that is pretty messed up. The person this belongs too already replaced it with a new machine. My job is to transfer all her data from this machine to disk so that I can transfer it to her. She doesn't want to lose any data (understandably so).

Any operation I attempted (i.e., double clicking on any folder icon, like My Documents, My Computer, etc) resulted in a complete crash. The only good news is that I can actually start and navigate around using the command line. Also, I can access the internet.

I have a network, so if I can map the drives I can get this thing figured out (hopefully). Also, I tried a USB drive but I couldn't figure out how to access it from the command line.

Two questions (I need to use the command line for these): How would I go about accessing the USB drive and how can I map the shared drives on my network so that I may cd to that directory for use of the copy command?

EDIT - sorry, yes, Windows XP Media Edition.

Answer 1

I'm assuming it's a WinXP machine.

• Use xcopy instead of copy.
• The USB drive should show up as another disk drive when you plug it in, like E: or something, just keep trying letters.
• You can map a network drive using net use * \\server\share /u:Username it will then ask you for the password, once it's mapped it will tell you what drive letter it ended up using.
• I'd start with a chkdsk /f c: and see what it finds.

Answer 2

I'd just boot it using Knoppix, and manipulate all the files that way.

Knoppix is a great tool for this sort of system recovery.

Edit: Yea, seems for me that the first thing on a laptop to go is always the optical drive...They just can't take the pain.

I've had some success with booting Knoppix from a USB key. It'd be my preferred method if USB keys could be made read only...I'm all about read-only media for troubleshooting.

Answer 3

Any operation I attempted (i.e., double clicking on any folder icon, like My Documents, My Computer, etc) resulted din a complete crash. The only good news is that I can actually start and navigate around using the command line. Also, I can access the internet.

That is most of the times a shell extension crashing, you could use ShellExView and sort on the Company field now you can select those that are not from Microsoft and disable those. Disabling non-microsoft services and start-up programs can also help to resolve in this problem, use MSConfig for that.

Reboot and enjoy a working Windows Explorer. ;-)