I'm doing it again - replying to my own emails. Problem solved - I eventually discovered how to remove the laptop's drive. After that it was a simple job to slave it into a desktop system and copy the files I needed. Ian Porter Computer Guys Inc. Arrowtown New Zealand [log in to unmask] ----- Original Message ----- From: Ian To: [log in to unmask] Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2003 1:35 PM Subject: [PCSOFT] Laptop file retrieval problem Folks, I've got a curly one. A 3-month old Acer 234XC laptop has XPHome. The OS is damaged and needs to be recovered, but only a full recovery is possible, not a repair, which means all files will be lost. The customer would like to have some important jpg's retrieved. Using the Acer boot disk, I can enter the system in DOS and see the files I want to retrieve. (The system must be FAT32, otherwise I don't see how this would be possible) The CDRW drive works insofar as I can read the contents of CD's . There is a floppy drive also. There is a network port, 2 USB ports and a printer port. Here's the curly bit: All the 20 or so jpg's I want to retrieve are over 1.4Mb so I can't copy them to floppy. All of them are over 2mb's. I considered pulling out the HDD and slaving it to another system, but I'm durned if I can see how to remove it, short of gutting the machine completely, so that's out. If anyone can think of another way I can do this retrieval job, I'd much appreciate it. Curious about the people moderating your messages? Visit our staff web site: http://freepctech.com/staff.shtml