K so i have this laptop... and I need to get about 400k worth of word doc's off it before I reformat it... the xp install is somehow corrupt and it will not even boot at all.... If i try to use an xp disk to go in to command prompt and copy the files, it won't let me access the documents and settings folder... it just says "access denied" My question... is there any other way to get this info off the computer? If i use a 98 boot disk and dos in, will i be able to get into the protected folders? And is there any way I can hook into the hd directly through the serial port or something then connect to my desktop and slave it? Any help appreciated.