Laptop Problems

Ok so I was on my laptop (a HP Pavilion DV6000) about 1 day ago just browsing the internet, chatting on aim, just your typical stuff when out of no where it froze up. If you don’t already know HP’s or at least my HP can only run about 5-6 hours or so until it starts overheating, the fan gets super loud, and the bottom of the computer just about burns a hole in your lap, and if you don’t take the hint and turn it off and let it cool down for a while, it will shut its self down right in the middle of what your doing…
This has happened to me countless times before. So when it froze up while it was running pretty hot I just figured it was over heating and I might as well turn it off. But since it was completely frozen and unresponsive I had to just hold the power button and shut it off (I know its bad to do that but I had to). After I let it sit for about an hour I turned it back on and this is what followed:
It turned on, all the lights came on, followed by the HP logo on the screen, and then a black screen came on saying:
“We apologize for the inconvenience, but windows did not start successfully. A recent hardware or software change might have cause this.”
Followed by some more text, and then it asks how I would like to start windows up, in safe mode(s), last known good configuration, or start windows normally.
I have seen this screen before from when the hunk of crap would shut down out of no where so I hit “start windows normally” just like always and it started to boot up, with the Microsoft Windows XP loading screen. Then BAM, the blue screen of death poped up and then restarted instantly. I then tried every single other boot option, all the safe modes, everything, and every time it would show that blue screen followed by an automatic restart.
So I hit f8 and tried all the options in there, reboot, debugging mode, all of them, they all did the same thing and brought back to that dreaded blue screen. So I came back to that screen and turned off the automatic restart to read the blue screen, and this is what it said:
“A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer”
UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME
If this is the first time, etc etc….
Technical information:
*** STOP: 0×000000ED (0×8A7F96A0, 0xc0000006, 0×00000000, 0×00000000)
So that’s the dealio now here’s my questions:
Is there absolutely any way I can recover the files off of it? I could almost care less about fixing it, and I’m definitely not going to pay someone to fix it, mainly because the hunk of crap is only worth about $200 on eBay right now, and its just been a really crappy computer, random crashes, low battery life, and constantly over heating after only a few hours of use. Not only that but I’m upgrading to a 24 iMac in a few months. But I really really need the files off of it. I run my own ecommerce webshop and I have tons of files for it on my now dead computer…
I’ve heard of some people installing Linux, or another free OS onto it, retrieving there files and then just selling it, is that really a possibility? And how would I do it?
So if there’s any one out there that knows why this may have happened, or know how I can fix it and get my files of this piece of crap, I would really really appreciate the help. I have a pretty good understanding of computers and electronic parts, I’ve fixed TV’s and game consoles before so if I need to pull this thing apart I can so please feel free to tell me any way you can think of to fix it.
Thanks,
Tyler