There are a couple of Free DOS Boot programs that will help in getting your data back from NTFS partitions. Read and download from: http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm Doug At 3/18/2005 12:44 PM, Stan & Brenda wrote: >My daughter-in-law's lap top seems to have crashed (again). It had >Windows XP on it. I can redo everything from scratch with the restore >disks. Before I do this My question is, when I go into C:\ drive in DOS >using a windows 98 boot disk, and run a directory there are only 14 >(utility) files and no directories from the previous setup. Does this >mean they have all been wiped out or are they some where I don't know >about? I tried the restore disk but it just came up and said to contact >Compaq. I was going to try to save a couple of their files they didn't >have backed up. My guess is that they are all gone. Am I right? PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download visit our download web page at: http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml