[Wylug-help] Messed up installation.

[Douglas G Mckendrick]

Hi all, 
    I'm hoping someone can help me in a messed up installation of linux on my laptop.  I have a hp presario laptop with an nvidia grahics card.  Out of all the installations of linux I tried simply mepis with opt-in nvideo drivers was the only distribution I could install (un)successfully .  
    During the install, I shrunk my vista partition so as I may dual boot.  I used GParted, which was on the mepis distribution.  Installation seemed to be a success, until I rebooted.  I couldn't boot into windows, or into mepis.  the boot loader wasn't loading.  Only windows was available, which hangs at the windows loading logo.  So I put the mepis cd in and checked the partitions.  I don't know why, but gparted hadn't completed the partitioning as expected.  I still had only two partions, 1 with windows, the other with the hp rescue.  Where previously I had 30 gb of free space (for my mepis dist.), Now I only have 3gb. 
    Windows has obviously become unstable somewhere, I try and use the hp rescue, I just get the blue screen.  I have no backup discs and no factory discs.  
    All I am interested in now is getting some photo's and other bits off of the windows partition, then I can happily format my hard drive.  I have mepis running as root off of the install disc, but I can't see or access my hard drive.  Can anyone recommend a way to view the hard drive?  How would I mount it?
    Sorry for the long winded e-mail, but I thought some background might help.

Cheers

Doug