In article ,
clare at snyder dot ontario dot canada wrote:

I'd pull the hard drive, stick it into a USB drive case, and connect
it to another computer to see if it is readable before wasting ANY
more time on the computer. No need to get the old computer running if
you can just pop the data from the old drive into a new computer.
(by the way, I do this a LOT in my business - repairing and
maintaining computer systems)

There's companies specialized in recovering data
from crashed harddisks but they're horribly expensive.

If the drive works when inserted in an external case and you get error
messages trying to read it, you can order and download a copy of
SPINRITE from grc.com. Cost is $89, money well spent.

It may take some time (the longest reported recovery time is 3-months, I
personally had one run 23-days on a 250GB HD on a Toshiba laptop) but it
will recover anything that is recoverable.