Recovering files from a laptop

I recently got on my hands a laptop that seems to have a faulty windows installation, it keeps rebooting once it enters windows.

I want to take the files out, nuke the partition and then reinstall windows (repair  install doesn't work). Is there any way to do it without taking the drive out and sticking it into a 2.5" enclosure?

Not really.  If a soft repair won't work, you're going to need to hook it up to something else with a functioning operating system.  Unless you have a separate partition for your windows already set up...no luck.  Then there's the chance that the hard drive is bad and it's really not Windows' fault...which will be insanely expensive to recover data from.

Hmm. Maybe. My last option is to try and use some sort of LiveCD. Maybe with a network interface, log onto my main machine and maybe transfer files through it. Never done it before and maybe its not even possible, but I should at least try.

>>3
LiveCD is your way out, though good luck working out how to use Linux :(

If you set up an FTP server on a host computer, things should go swimmingly. I've done it before with my sister's computer.

Of course if you had a Mac you could do target disk mode but oh well

>>3
A LiveCD will do good. You can boot the liveCD, mount the windows partitions, then transfer the files over onto your windows network shares.
It's not that hard to work out either.

For the liveCD, I'd recommend knoppix or the ubuntu liveCD, both of those will work for this

How about Bart PE? Anybody tried that before?

Ah! Tried Bart PE after all. works perfectly. Thanks guys for sharing.