HELP! Need to gain access to my files on HD to SAVE/BACKUP

[nikki4095]

HI Im desperate.

My dell laptop decided to get a blue screen. Ive had no problems with it either..never even froze. Anyway....I had an xp disc that came with my laptop that wasd suppose to be the solution...only when i opened it, it had a pretty nasty deep scratch. The paper envelope was in perfect condition so apparently it came this way. SO i removed my hardrive and was able to view files on a friends laptop...seemed to be working fine but my account, which is administrator is password protected and windows 7 is denying me access. I only know poeple with windows 7 so this is a problem i think. I decided my best bet was to save and back up my data and then install windows 7 (with a friends disk) and be all set. I did read that windows 7 gives you an option to transfer data before installing. I havent tried this yet because 1 i just read that and 2 im really afraid to screw something up without getting advice. Also, when viewing my hard drive i noticed that it was almost completely full. Could this of been my problem to begin with? would freeing up space on my hard drive and then putting it back in my laptop MAYBE fix the blue screen?? the error says unmountable boot volume. Is this error ever associated with a lack of memory available? Also, I would like to free up space anyway and i bet i will need space to install windows 7...but i dont want to delete anything important. Any advice on what to delete ?? Im not very computer literate but I need to figure this out.... My hard drive has some personal things on it so i cant take it to be fixed by a third party. i think i covered all my questions.. oh ya.. i think the answer to this ? is no butt... if i try and backup files that i dont have access to on windows 7 will it let me back them up without viewing them? and if so.. would this do me any good?

if anyuone can help me I would really appreciate it!!!
THANKS!!

[pnky_14]

Try downloading the latest version of knoppix live cd at http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

Then burn that iso image to a cd or dvd using nero, roxio, or similar

Put the hard drive back into the computer that it came from and boot to that live CD.

When it boots completely up, there will be a knoppix folder on the desktop...click that folder and down the left side you should see a listed hdd. Probably sda1 or sda0 and then you'll see the size of your hard drive may say 80GB or however big the hard drive is. Once you know you have the correct hard drive, you just simply click on it...you don't have to change permissions with the newest version of knoppix so you should easily be able to transfer/delete any files to an external hard drive or maybe even burn them to the disk . You may have to dig for your info...I hope you know where all your docs are stored. Also, bare in mind that if you save anything on the knoppix desktop, those items will not be there if you try to reboot the knoppix cd. Best of luck, lemme know how it goes.