Member Avatar for bill0603

i really need help very badly,my acer laptop has startup or boot problems.i cant access,log on windows.before putting in the shop for repair i wish i could save my files to a cd,dvd disc or usb.could there be any chance that i could used the command prompt to copy the files?what could be the commands that i could used?nd the problem is when i access my command prompt it appears like this X:\windows\system32> is it normal? what could have happened?thank you in advance

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— A prompt that begins on the X: drive usually means you are in the Windows Recovery / WinPE environment (the recovery tools run from RAM rather than your hard disk). That is normal and it simply means your internal drive may not be C: while in recovery. See the Windows RE overview for details: .

Practical steps you can take from the command prompt:

  • Identify the real drive letters before copying. Use DiskPart to list volumes so you know which letter is your Windows/user partition and which is the USB or external drive:

    diskpart
list volume
exit

    Look for the volume with your user folders to determine its letter. (DiskPart docs: diskpart.)

  • Use a more robust copy tool than the simple copy built into cmd for whole folders. Robocopy handles large trees and preserves attributes; xcopy can work too. Example patterns:

    robocopy "D:\Users\YourUser" "E:\Backup\YourUser" /MIR /COPYALL /R:2 /W:2

    or

    xcopy "D:\Users\YourUser\Documents" "E:\Backup\Documents" /E /H /K /O /X

    (Docs: robocopy, xcopy.)

If command-line copying is awkward, follow ’s suggestion: remove the laptop HDD and connect it to another PC with a USB enclosure or adapter — that’s often the safest, easiest way. A couple of cautions: if the disk is BitLocker- or EFS-encrypted you’ll need the recovery key or user certificate to read files; and FAT32-formatted USB sticks cannot hold files larger than ~4 GB (format to NTFS/exFAT if needed). For BitLocker recovery see Microsoft’s guide: .

Verify files after copying (check sizes and a few documents open). If anything fails, note exact error messages and the drive letters involved before proceeding.

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Member Avatar for cguan_77

Hi to copy in command prompt you can use this syntax:
copy file to be copied destination

copy file.doc c:\ 'this would copy file.doc to the root directory in c:
copy file.doc c:\ f1 'this would copy file.doc to the folder f1 in c:

Member Avatar for Suspishio

If you can't do what cguan_77 suggests, then you can remove the HDD from your laptop, put it into an external USB enclosure (of the right type - IDE or SATA) and connect the drive to another PC to get your files off.

Hope that helps.

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