How can I backup a hard drive if Vista won’t boot?

My girlfriend’s laptop (Dell) isn’t working and won’t boot Vista, and she has tons of files (documents, pics, vids, songs, etc.) she wants to save before we reinstall the OS. We just bought an external hard drive. How can I back up all her files if we can’t get into Vista?

What is the best software to recover data of a HD that can not boot into windows? ?

I’m looking for a point and click type of boot-up software that will allow me to backup data into a USB drive.
“point-and-click” What I mean by this is that I’m looking for a program that could be booted through a CD like Ghost and have a GUI to explore the contents of the [...]

Is there any backup software that can auto backup on every boot?

I’ve seen some backup software that can auto backup every day, every month or every year but I haven’t seen a software that can auto backup every time I switch on the computer. I need that software so that nobody can put his or her files on my computer because when computer is backuped, his [...]