It is possible to do a partial system restore from a knoppix boot CD by copying files manually
This should cover legal and safe downloads
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html
While also giving you a real option to recover your system.
Good instructions here once you get booted and running from a boot CD
http://community.spiceworks.com/how...restore-manually-when-windows-is-not-bootable
couple of future looking thoughts for you
1. A 6-7 year old machine running vista should be retired. It served you well, put it to rest and replace it. The boot CD at the very least should let you copy your data off and move it to a new machine (use a USB drive as the copy destination)
2. Online backups like Crash Plan work great and are pretty cost effective these days, might be worth looking into, the perfect setup to save vacation pictures.
This should cover legal and safe downloads
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html
While also giving you a real option to recover your system.
Good instructions here once you get booted and running from a boot CD
http://community.spiceworks.com/how...restore-manually-when-windows-is-not-bootable
couple of future looking thoughts for you
1. A 6-7 year old machine running vista should be retired. It served you well, put it to rest and replace it. The boot CD at the very least should let you copy your data off and move it to a new machine (use a USB drive as the copy destination)
2. Online backups like Crash Plan work great and are pretty cost effective these days, might be worth looking into, the perfect setup to save vacation pictures.