help windows 7

Customer called me last night. They have a desktop running Windows 7. They said it's ""stuck in Automatic Repair Mode" Customer says he has a "recovery disk" he made for it.


I would like to repair, fix the issue without having to do a factory reset on his machine. He has pics, movies, videos, games etc. he would like to have backed up but his system will not load into desktop, won't boot into safe mode, last known configuration etc,,, Maybe I can try to create bootable USB flash drive for him.. Any ideas, suggestions, thanks, Mike. he just wants the system up and running

1. First step I'd probably try then is to boot the computer from a "Live" USB key/flash drive and get a backup copy of all of their personal files.
   
   
   A "Live" USB flash drive contains a complete bootable computer operating system (OS). When you boot a computer from it, this OS loads into, and then runs from the computer's memory instead of booting from the OS on your hard drive. This allows you to run a different OS without installing it or making any changes to your computer's current configuration.
   
   To create one of these, download an ISO file containing the OS you want to use, such as Ubuntu, Slax or Zorin, then use something like Rufus[/u] to burn that ISO file to a USB key/flash drive
   
   Now boot your computer from this USB key/flash drive and your computer will be running the OS on it instead of the one on your hard drive.
   
   
2. Once that's done, you're now ready to tackle repairing Windows.

rlirpa's method would preclude removing the hdd, then using a USB adapter, or slaving it in, to another computer to access the data.