I have a Dell Dimension E520, which won’t boot to Windows (Vista), as
described in the following thread:

http://www.microsoft.com/communities...2b8e92&lc=1033

I have given up trying to repair Vista, but now I would like to back up the
data on the drive before doing a clean install.

I have mounted the HD in a working XP box and tried to backup the contents
with Norton Ghost 2003 and Acronis True Image 11 Home. Neither Application
can back up the Documents and Settings folder.

If Vista fails both to load and to repair itself, as described in the
thread, how are users supposed to retrieve their data safely?