Files to new drive, best method?

Factual Questions
1

My hard-drive was recently corrupted, all my drivers (except the most basic; keyboard, mouse, monitor) have been deleted (thank G-d for laptops). This includes my cd and dvd drives, so I can’t just “repair.” I figure the quickest solution is to install an old drive I have, install XP on the “new” drive, and transfer the files from my “old” c: to my “new” c:. I want to make sure all my old files make the transfer though.
I tried Windows XP Transfer Wizard; it doesn’t seem to comprehend the “old hd/new hd on same pc.” scenario.
I’m a relative computer moron. Is there a program out there (freeware preffered) that can find all the files of a certain “class” (pictures, for example, are jpgs, tiffs, giffs, and bmps on my pc) and allow an easy transfer?

Thanks in advance, DESK

2

Your OP is hard to follow:

Is this a laptop or a desktop computer. You mention a laptop but putting multiple jobs in those isn’t easy.

Also, I am having trouble keeping track of the drives. You have a corrupted one and I assume that is the same one that will become your “old” drive afterwards. Is that correct.

Did you buy a new drive and install a fresh copy of Windows on it? Do you just want certain file types copied from the old drive?

A typical scenario is to just install a new drive, make the old one the slave and then you can just open each drive and move them around at will. Windows search functionality makes it easy to search for say every .mp3 file on the old drive and then just copy and paste the whole file list onto the new drive.