Resuing files without Restore Utility

[RBWizard]

First the bad news: I have a Gateway all-in-one Media Center PC (looks sexy but is totally unserviceable). A few weeks ago Windows told me I had some corrupted files. As a result, Windows won't run (and neither will the rescue disk). Not wanting to reformat and start anew, I explored the possibility of removing the hard drive, installing it in another PC and extracting the files. (Remember the not sericeable part?). There is no way the HD is coming out of this PC without destroying it.

Now, the good news: I've started to make some progress. Using bootdisk.com I've been able to create a CD boot disk (did I mention no floppy drive) and using various utilities determined that the drive itself is undamaged. Using NTFSDOS I am able to see the files I need to recover.

The problem: I want to either copy these files to CD (PC has a CD-RW drive or I have a USB DVD-RW, or I have a USB flash drive, or PC has SD card readers and I have lots of SD cards). But I can't get any of these devices to work.

I need: a CD boot disk that has DOS support for at least one of these devices. Or, I need another approach that I haven't yet thought of. One other idea would be to add network support to my bootable CD so I can copy the files to another PC over my wireless 802.11g network.

(cross-posted on neowin forum)