copy files in harddrive

[Milk]

My Windows XP is dead and I got to boot it in an external disc.  I got to the screen of dos command.  How can I copy those word/excel files in desktop and my document in my harddrive?

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

I don't think you can do what you want to do like that.

If you have another computer, you can hook up the current hard drive as a Slave and access the hard drive in My Computer on the other computer.

Otherwise, if you have a Flash Drive, you may want to temporarily install Portable Linux.
With that, you can boot the computer from your flash drive and copy the files to the flash drive.
(www.pendrivelinux.com)

[TheShadow]

Milk,
If the XP drive is DEAD, you're not going to get anything out of it any way you connect it.
Now, if the drive is OK, but windows is screwed up, then you have some options.

Like was just said by 'Carbon Dudeoxide' , you should attach that drive to another computer as a slave drive and extract the files you need using Windows Explorer on the OS drive.  Then the files could be copied to a Flash Drive or burned to a CD/DVD.
I perform this "Service" all the time for my customers.

From DOS you will NOT even be able to read the average Windows XP drive, because it will be formatted NTFS and that's invisible to DOS.  (Sorry, I didn't make the rules!)

However, if you have "NTFS4DOS" on your boot disk, it will allow you to read and copy files from an NTFS drive.

Due to this restriction, I NEVER set up any HD for XP on an NTFS formatted drive.
XP runs just fine on a FAT-32 drive and then I have full control over that drive, even from a DOS boot disk.

Good Luck to you!

The Shadow