(Asneeze, father of Achoo) What his name seriously Azeez?
Your 2nd PC? Assuming you still have the first one, you can pop the the lil' bastard into the 1st and move the data off to it. And you can even run data recovery utilities like
PC Inspector File Recovery or
Recuva.
If not...
Go out and buy either a shotty little memory stick, or front the money for an external. You had the right idea with the Knoppix live CD, and you OUGHT to be able to copy any files from the hard drive to an external media.
I've removed my other suggestion... figured I probably shouldn't make it here...
(Yet another reason I am brow-beating myself to use Linux. Ubuntu is the friendliest of the dragons.)