booting on a usb stick

Ok, I need to boot from a usb stick into linux and access files on the local hdd of a windows laptop.
A little background:
A friend of mine needs to access some files on a laptop of his to which he forgot the password and there is no guest account. The files aren't protected and so taking out the hdd and putting it in an enclosure would work, but we don't have an enclosure on hand.

I've tried Damn Small Linux (DSL) and while that booted just fine, either it's not seeing the hdd or I'm just too much of a linux noob to tell it to mount the drive/access the drive/ whatever it is I need to do to get DSL to access the drive.

My guess is the later and I'm just a noob as my linux experience is addmitedly slim, just a introductory c++ programming class with all coding/compiling done on a linux box (SUN microsystems or something like that I'm a noob, it was a while ago, I don't remember).

Any advice or suggested USB linux ditros?

As it will probably be asked for, the system I'm testing this on, is a custom built intel core2duo E6600 @2.4ghz
intel mobo D975xbx
2GB ram
nvidia 7950gt
Samsung SATA3.0 400GB hdd
onboard network card
Soundblaster Live! 24bit pci soundcard

The system I'm trying to access for a friend is a dell laptop, can't remember specs, but it's got celeron cpu, 512ram and xp media center

Also when I booted to DSL it was not able to access the internet nor did any sound work, niether are crucial as I just need to access the hdd, but it'd be nice to get those to work inside DSL.
Sorry for the long post.

I'm not sure if Linux can natively access a FAT32 or NTFS format drive. You may need some sort of driver/converter.

Unless your friend specifically wants to keep the current Windows installation intact, a better solution might be to reinstall Windows on the hard drive. You don't need to format the drive first, so all the files would still be there. You just need a bootable copy of windows - preferably the same version as is on the laptop. When the installation gets to the point where it finds the current installation, tell it to "keep the current file system intact" (so it doesn't format it.) You can either reinstall WinXP over the current installation, or install it in a new folder ( for example, Windows2).

Some laptops come with "recovery discs", but don't use those because they will wipe the hard drive first. Just use any CD with the same version as is listed on the label with the "key" - even a burned copy - and use the key on the label. Or use a different version, but you'll then need to use a different key.

Possible quick fix:
On logon screen, hit Ctrl+Alt+Del twice to get the alternate login box. Enter "Administrator" / "password".
Still often works.

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Mmm. IME windows does crazy rubbish when installing over itself. "Documents and settings" is full of Guest & Guest.<new hostname> duplications. Why it can't just rename the old root folder feck knows.

Why boot from a USB? I would download one of the many existing linux boot cds and write to a cd-rw (or even a cd-r; likely to be useful again, and the things are dead cheap anyway).
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Linux+Boot+CD

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Most modern linux distros can read NTFS locally. However for write support I'd recommend something like ntfs-3g.

To mount with ntfs-3g, create a folder in /media/ to which you will mount your drive, then edit your fstab file to include a line;
You'd need to sudo apt-get ntfs-3g first.
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HTH

thanks for the replies guys, I'll try 'em out.