Besides that Linux thing, you can also try creating
a BartPE CD:
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder
In either case, you create a bootable CD that will
give you both access to NTFS and FAT32 partitions,
as well letting you copy files off the troubled
drive in question over the network.
When replacing the drive, use FAT32 -- the security
benefits of NTFS are marginal and are greatly
outweighed by the much greater hassle of trouble-
shooting serious Windows problems and recovering
data from failing disks. While NTFS is suppose to
be better than FAT32 in protecting the integrity of
data, in real life situations where the hard drive
is being to fail, Windows 2K/XP will just blue
screen you and you need to get the data off as
quickly as possible.
-BC