My computer=PWNED :(

[?igma]

I don't know much about laptops, but isn't there a way to connect one to a regular PC as if it was "just"a datasource ?

[itadakimasu]

you could try booting up a livecd like pclinux, or knoppix to see if it will read your hard drive if all else is failing, its worth a shot. if you google pclinux it is free to dl and you can just burn it to a cd and boot off that cd into a full OS from where if your hdd isn't trashed you should be able to pull files off of it

[darkshadow]

your problem was salvagable untill you said laptop, now if you cant take it apart and take out the harddrive you are indeed pwned, no fix.
/thread.

THOUGH, what bbaucom said could work, but just get a bootable xp instead :/, there are releases that are fully bootable of a dvd.