Yes, as one person said in the other discussion, "You could possibly use a bootable Linux CD (Live CD) to boot the computer and copy your data to a flash drive/External hard drive before reinstalling Windows."
If you can download and burn a disc for Ubuntu - using another computer, of course - and if you can access the BIOS settings in your laptop to set CD-ROM/DVD-ROM as the initial boot device and if you can open the CD/DVD tray to put the Ubuntu disc in it and then restart, the computer should load Ubuntu from the CD drive. Once Ubuntu is running, you can use it's File Browser (like Windows Explorer) to browse files on the hard drive. If you locate files you want to retrieve, you can save them to a flash drive.
