boot up with usb support

I have an old laptop that will not boot up. I am trying to recover some files but neet to use a boot up with usb support. I have a recovery program and it can see the files but I have no where to put them once recovered. I would like to send them to a flash drive. I have the boot up disk for the recovery program but I need to add the usb support. Don't know how to do this. Can anyone help.

 

Thanks for your response. I had already thought of using an adapter but the connector is really old, must be a serial connector but I have not been able to find an adapter that I could connector it. The computer is a gateway 5150. The OS must be corrupt. I do not have usb capability legacy support. There are 2 usb connections and they worked when I could boot but using the recovery disk, it does not see my flash drive to copy files to.

 

good question
I would be careful that you do not overwrite your files
If possible you can take the drive out and place it in an external smaller hard drive
You can read the files from there
Some of the usb flash drives have windows 98 se support ( no the first version windows 98 plain)
They often don't mention it on the package but if you go to support and find a driver for older smaller versions of the same product line they usually work fine. Same product line more capacity
Just make sure the drive is formatted in fat32 not ntsf as windows 98 will not see it
Some usb sticks however do not have windows 98 se support
be interesting to see the answers on this query

 

http://www.ubuntu.com/
If you get Ubunto, you will have a OS with a GUI that runs off of a CD.
The download is an ISO file, meaning it is an image of a CD. It will need to be burned to a CD using Nero or Roxio as an ISO file. If you end up with a CD with just the ISO file on it, it was made incorrectly.
When properly burned, you have a bootable CD that will install a Linux system OR a CD that will work as an Linux operating system. Yes, both at once. Just be sure not to click on the Install icon that will be on your desktop. In short, a way to get USB drivers going for you without overwriting anything on the hard drive.