I admit that I am new to this whole thing. I spent about 3 hours last night looking for a program that would allow me to transfer files from my wrecked Compaq Laptop running XP to my pristine Dell Vista x64.

I found Knoppix. After trial and error I figured out how to boot to the visual instead of the default text and speech. Boot: knoppix (enter)

But now I need to know how to transfer the files from the corrupted hard drive to my computer so that I can reformat the XP.

Please point me in the right direction (each new forum is a little bit disorienting). That or give me a step by step with links (ftp servers and such). If you give me links please provide me with the most user friendly versions. I'm pretty good with my computer, but I tend to want to over know. So the simpler the better.

Thank you, I can't wait to get this fixed. I've been nagged since Christmas to get this darn thing fixed.

Oh, and I'll most likely be using either USB to connect the two or a mass storage device.