I really need some help. My housemate's laptop won't boot windows vista. and she's got all her files on there. She has a new machine and wants them transferring. Now, she has no Windows disk or recovery disk so im a litte stuck trying to fix the filing system.

i've got linux mint up and runining howver it wont read the hdd, as it's corrupt. I need to fix the hhd from mint but i have no fucking idea how. i know the command is fsck but i dunno how to implement it. anyone? please?

also..this fucking keyboard...

>Pull HDD out of old machine
>Put old HDD in new machine as a slave drive
>get everything you need

Alternatively, if you can't get the old drive out (some manufacturers rivet them instead of using screws), you can put both pc's beside each other and use long SATA and molex cables.

They're both laptops, and I don't have a desktop here with me in Scotland, because that would have been the first thing I'd do.

My only other option is to purchase a sATA-USB cable and literally just plug it in by USB, but they're expensive. Think for the sake of the pictures I might just tell her to go to the local computer shop and ask them to do it, but they'll be charging, like, £30. minnie-moo-foo-foos.