From: John Beckett 

Ellen K.  wrote in message
news::
>... is all due to a failing hard drive ...

Many people have reported that some types of disk failure can be
temporarily overcome by an hour or two in the freezer!

Here is what I did on a computer where there was no recent backup and the
disk failed (would not boot):

Remove old disk. Put in anti-static bag. Put that in a plastic bag. Put
that in freezer of a normal refrigerator, sitting on a thick plastic tray.

After an hour, remove disk from freezer and insert in a good PC as the
second drive. Boot the system in the good PC and use it to copy stuff from
the failed drive. The failed drive worked for about half an hour.

John

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-4