Advice needed on Lappy problem for friend........

[ToBeMe]

A friend of my wife came to me just now with a Compaq Laptop and LOTS of problems..............

Her HD is about gone.......bad sectors, etc.. It won't even detect her floppy drive anymore but still boots into Win 98. She is a Court Reporter and has a multitude of documents she HAS to recover........but, no way to back it up! The lappy is out of warranty and I don't have a Lappy to swap HD's to. I'm not very knowledgable when it comes to lappy's, so, any ideas on how to recover this info cheaply and efficiently???????

 

[Stripe]

Maybe this is a bit obvious, but how about connecting to a network, or hooking up a zip drive or external CDRW.

 

[ToBeMe]

Thanks for the response! Well, I haven't physically tried that yet, but, my concern is that it will not detect either. She was working with a USB mouse and it quit working as well as her printer....... as for the Network, I had thought of that, but, it would have to be a PC Card network as there is no internal networking on her lappy and my main concern is whether Windows or the HD could even handle setting that up in its already compromised state since it fails to recognize the floppy already............

Anyone know if it is possible to connect a lappy HD directly to a regular tower system???? I used to have a guy working for me whom handled all laptop problems.........but, he's gone to the big city for more $$$$ and to be quite honest, I've nearly always avoided working on laptops......don't know why..........just never interested me, plus I keep busy on other problems.......