Hello... I originally posted this in the Windows 7 forum, but I think it's more of an MS DOS issue, and hopefully someone here can help...

I was running a freeware defrag program when the process halted (prob. due to loss of power/sleep mode) and my laptop no longer boots from the hard drive when powered on. Win7 startup repair does not restore the system. Using the Command Prompt I can still SEE my files, but there are no 'autoexec.bat', 'config.sys' or 'command.exe' files on the ROOT (and I'm not 100% sure that Win 7 even uses them). I think I may have to reformat and reinstall to my factory original disks, which will reformat my hard drive and destroy months of data.

Before I do that, I want to try to save the "my documents" files to an external drive, then reload them after the rebuild. I intend to use the 'xcopy' function from the Command Prompt to copy the entire c:\ drive to the external drive, then when my machine is rebuilt, copy all of my documents back.

I plan on using the "xcopy c:\*.* /a /e /k" command from inside the root directory of the external drive.

Will this work, and does anyone have any other advice for me to try before I reformat my drive?

My laptop is a Toshiba Satellite 505 - s6005, and I'm running Win 7 Home and Office 64bit.

Thank you for any help you can give...
Tom
Seaview1231. The most conservative recovery method is to GET another HDD for that laptop and install Windows. The make the old HDD a USB device using an adapter.

2. Alternative to this is to use a Desktop PC to backup the original drive as a slave drive, using another TYPE of adapter, if needed.

3. Another approach is to boot a Linux distro from a USB device and see if you can locate important files and burn them to a DVD.

4. Or, thaxter are some third party Windows tools that do what you would do with the Linux USB device. CHECK this:
http://www.ubcd4win.com/howto.htm

Otherwise, trying to recovery files using a corrupt system is often futile. And may even be destructive.
And that is not just IMHO.