How to access hard drive?

My friend's laptop has crashed recently. He is unable to start his laptop in any mode. He tried to use Knoppix live CD to access his hard drive but that did not work. He looked around in the file manager but has not found a way to access his hard drive. He just want to retrieve his hard drive and then reinstall Windows XP.

Any tips and suggestions are welcome.

This has been answered a lot of times. Hint: Knoppix is not a repair/backup tool, but can be used in such ways if you know what you are doing.

@jdrnyc

For example, put 'repair' in the upper right corner search box.
That will give you some threads.
Among them is one that looks promising:

http://www.knoppix.net/forum/threads...ghlight=repair

Hope that helps.