Hello and welcome to the forum.
There are a number of methods you could possibly use.
1. And what I would do, is..... Download the free 30 day trial of Acronis True Image from here
http://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/computer-backup/
Install that on another PC and use it to create bootable rescue media on optical media or USB Thumbdrive.
I would then use the rescue media to boot the problem PC and create a full disk image of the hard drive, onto an external resource such as a USB Hard Drive.
Then I would connect that USB Hard Drive to the system that was running Acronis True Image and mount it and examine the contents to confirm that my critical data was there and viable (you can open a document, a picture, a song), etc.
2. Boot from a Linux Live Distro on Optical Media or a USB Thumbdrive
I would recommend the Linux Mint MATE (32 or 64 bit version) from here
http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php Make sure you get the proper version for your system architecture or just grab the 32 bit version which should work on practically anything, if you don't know what your system architecture is.
You should then be able to view the contents of your Hard Drive and copy off your profile folder onto external media.
DO NOT install it, just run the live environment to get what you need off the problem system.
