Computer blue screen hard drive recovery question?

My laptop has a ton of viruses so I am not interested in trying to repair it because I do not have the factory windows cd anymore.

My question is if my laptop is at blue screen can I run a usb to my desktop and find the hard drive to copy files?

Does the computer have to be on for this?

If the fact that my computer is at blue screen going to make this difficult? It will not load in safe mode either?

Can I recover the stuff from my documents etc or just what is on the hard drive in the my computer section?

I am thinking about going with Linux. Any suggestions or problems with doing this?

Thanks everyone!

---

Orignal From: Computer blue screen hard drive recovery question?