Need files from a computer that won't boot up

[Accountable]

My beloved's laptop is on its last leg. Now the second hardrive I've bought for it won't boot. We ordered her a new netbook whichjust arrived. Cute little white Samsung with a 10 inch screen. Looks like we grabbed it before it grew up all the way. Now I want to get into the old hard drive to copy her files.



Being an old guy, I would make a bootable floppy but my notebook (the computer I'm using now) doesn't have a floppy drive. It's like the front door is locked and the key's broke off in the keyhole.



The BIOS setup works, and I booted the machine with the recovery disk so I know the machine still runs, but I don't want to wipe the hard drive yet.



How can I make a bootable CD for Windows XP so I can recover her stuff? Or is there another way to get the information without paying a tech the price of a new computer?

[gmc]

I'm no expert but you can but external floppy drives which might not actually be any help to you if your computer isn't set up to boot from it.

If you can boot it up I assume you can access the files you want to get at. Would an external hard drive work? set up a briefcase and transfer the files to that and you can then transfer them on to your now computer. You don't need the whole drive just the files you want to keep. I use an external drive rather for storing files that are critical I keep that way if my computer fails I haven't lost all my data/ I also back up the external drive daily in case that fails-which I have had happened but all i lost was a few documents for that day.