hi chris, thank you for all your help..
i went and purchased that cable.
slaved the hard drive to an old computer.
removed the data i wanted.
now in the process of completely reformatting laptop with new memory and o/s.
should be back to new, shortly.
because it is my works computer, it will now be password protected, so that only i use it. i have learnted a valuable and expensive lesson.
thanks once again.............the information received was very good