First time on a forum

[chanceron]

New to this forum or any forum. This may not be the right place to post this, but here goes anyway. I have a Vaio Sony laptop with vista OS, I think its a 64/32 bit system. It has worked fine for three years with no problems, I won this at the local pawn shop, so I have no recovery disc. System recovery options do not work, all five options except for command prompt. But the command prompt is X:\windows\system32>. I know a little about DOS, but have never seen X: ever. I have files on this laptop that I would like to get back but of course have no knowledge of how to do this. Please help if possible.

 

[Patonb]

Hi Chanceron, welcome.

X: is probably the recovery drive.
To get your files without opening the laptop you can use a livecd of Ubuntu then copy them to a usb stick/drive mor a network driver.
Give this a read: Use Ubuntu Live CD to Backup Files from Your Dead Windows Computer

If there isn't anything physical wrong with the laptop, and you have the cd-key on the back, you can download vista and reload it using the disk link on the forum and your key.

Hopefully that helps you start, keep asking if needed.