You can rescue almost anything using a dedicated distribution such as
SystemRescueCD. It is free. See:
http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage

Clonezilla is good for cloning your drive, assuming it is still good.
http://www.clonezilla.org/

These tools have the advantage over a regular Live CD in that they include
specialized tools for recovering data.

Your computer may not be sick, either. Sometimes they do not boot, but
everything is intact and the bootloader just needs to be reinstalled. Do
NOT re-install or you will lose everything (unless that is your intent).