Backing Up and Copying XP Files

[Herb Stein]

I'm by no means an XP expert ( Linux mostly) so this may be trivial. I have
frequent occassions where I have to copy and existing system to and external
USB drive. Mostly the "Documents and Settings" directory. I normally try to
drag and drop the directory, but somewhere in there, there are a couple of
nt(something) files that can't be copied because they're exclusively open or
something and the copy dies. Is there an easy way around this minor snafu?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I'm by no means an XP expert ( Linux mostly) so this may be trivial. I have
frequent occassions where I have to copy and existing system to and external
USB drive. Mostly the "Documents and Settings" directory. I normally try to
drag and drop the directory, but somewhere in there, there are a couple of
nt(something) files that can't be copied because they're exclusively open or
something and the copy dies. Is there an easy way around this minor snafu?

Thanks in advance!

You must close these files before you can copy them.

 

[Vagabond Software]

I'm by no means an XP expert ( Linux mostly) so this may be trivial. I
have frequent occassions where I have to copy and existing system to and
external USB drive. Mostly the "Documents and Settings" directory. I
normally try to drag and drop the directory, but somewhere in there, there
are a couple of nt(something) files that can't be copied because they're
exclusively open or something and the copy dies. Is there an easy way
around this minor snafu?

Thanks in advance!

--

Run xcopy /? at a command prompt. I think you will want something like
'xcopy /h /c /v /s' or some variation.

carl

 

[Herb Stein]

You must close these files before you can copy them.

I guess I knew that, but how when XP is running. The seem to be important
system files on a per-user basis.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I guess I knew that, but how when XP is running. The seem to be important
system files on a per-user basis.

What important system files?