Need help because PC crashed

I don't know if this is the right forum to put this in but since it deals with Windows crashing I guess this is where I'll put it.  I'm hoping that there's someone in here that can help me out with this problem.  My PC crashed today and I'm running out of options on what I need to do.  This is what happened.  As I was starting Morpheus up, it crashed.  So, I did the 3 finger salute(CTRL-ALT-DEL) to shut it down. That was fine.  Windows shut it down but once it did that it too crashed.  There was no other way of getting the system back up again other than to turn it off and reboot.

Normally, I'll get the blue scandisc screen.  That's what I got and once it got to 15% it said something about an illegal long file name and that it couldn't fix it. Alright, reboot again. I tried rebooting in Safe Mode...nothing. It'll crash during Scandisc.  The same thing goes when I try to boot off a start-up disc. Running Scanreg from a command prompt gives a "Your program caused a divide overflow error...." and then
crashes.  I ran Scanreg because at one point it wouldn't let me in even through Safe Mode and it said that it encountered an invalid registry/configuration setup.

Is there anything that I can use to fix this or perhaps just get my system up so that I can get the important stuff off?  I've really got some important documents on this drive and I would really hate to lose them. What about any software out there available for data recovery purposes?  Yeah, I know...I should've backed up my stuff. Unfortunately, those files were acquired in between schedules. I would greatly appreciate an help anyone can give. Thanks!

By they way...this is a Win98SE system.

-------added--------
Success!! I don't know what happened but I can now get in my system using a Win98SE start up disc.  I still can't boot up to Win98SE successfully.  So this is what I'm thinking of doing. Due to the large amount of data I need to transfer (~4GB worth), I will probably connect a spare drive to the computer and transfer the files using DOS.  One question, I totally forgot the DOS syntax to copy from one location to the other...meaning does anybody know the DOS syntax of copying a directory (with other directories in it) to another location (i.e. drive).  Once again, I would greatly appreciate any help.

Try this command from dos prompt:
                         
                          (source dir:file) (target dir:file)  
example type: copy c:dosnotes.doc a:dosnotes.doc

example:C:\>copy c:dosnotes.doc a:dosnotes.doc

Double check for copy to target file by typing: dir <enter>
to see what files are in the target directory to include the copied one. If there are to many files to show on the screen type: dir/p <enter>
for a partial display of the files in the directory.
Good luck got the info from my Computer Lit book from 96'. Kinda old but still has good DOS commands.

If you can boot with the startup disk then you should be able to copy the system files to C: from the disk.
copy command.com. example would be
A:\ copy command.com c:\
This should allow booting into your existing windows.

Thanks to those that replied.  Actually, even by making my drive as a slave and trying to get to the files that way would make my PC freeze.  This would happen even in DOS or booting up from a startup disk.  I found out (painfully) that just because of those two crashes my boot record got hosed, my partition table was in shambles, some clusters near the end of the drive were scrambled, and my directory structure is whacked!  Gosh, that absolutely stinks!  I was able to get some files out but my PC would still freeze when I tried to access them.

So, as a last resort, I'm running Lost and Found on the drive as I'm typing this.  It's been scanning this 20GB drive since 10 PM last night.  It's coming up with a couple of bad clusters and 1 unreadable sector.  I'm afraid that my drive is hosed.  Well, I guess this is a good reason to finally buy that 60 GB IBM Deskstar I've always wanted...hehehe.

If you wan to copy full directories to another location try this, cd to the windows command folder, then use xcopy to copy the folders: her isthe syntax ( I think this is right /e /v the latter syntax might be /f instead of /v I cannot remember off hand. (it has been a while since I have had to do this.) eg. c:windows\command:>xcopy c:\backup /e /v d:\backup\9-27-01  I hope this helps.....

Thanks for the reply Phantom.  It turned out that my drive truly was hosed.  Sent the drive back to Western Digital and they gladly sent me a replacement back.  Now, what do I do with an extra 20 GB drive??  Hhmm...make another computer of course! LOL!

[wizbones]

Just for general information:

XCOPY source [destination] [/A | /M] [/D[:date]] [P] [/S [/E]] [/V] [/W] [/C] [/i] [/Q] [/F] [/L] [/H] [/R] [/T] [/u]
[/K] [/N] [/O] [/X] [/Y] [/-Y] [/Z] [/EXCLUDE:file1[+file2][+files3]...]

source   Specifies the files(s) to copy

destination   Specifies the location and/or name of new files

/A   Copies only files with the archive attribute set, doesn't change the attribute.

/M   Copies only files with eh archive attribute set, turns off the archive attribute

/D:m-d-y   Copies files changed on or after the specified date.
if no date is given, copies only those files whose source time is newer than the destination time.

/EXCLUDE:file1[+file2][+file3]...   Specified a list of files containing strings. When any of the strings match any part of the absolut path of the file to be copied, that file will be excluded from being copied. For example, specifying a string like \obj\ or .obj will exclude all files underneath the direct obj or all the files with the .obj extension repectively

/P   Prompts you before creating each destination file.

/S   Copies directories an dsubdirectories except the empty ones.

/E   Copies directories and subdirectories, including empty ones. Same as /S /E. May be used to modify /T.

/V   Verifies each new file.

/W   Prompts you to press a key before copying.

/C   Continues copying even if errors occur.

/I   If destination does not exist and copying more than one file, assumes that destination must be a directory.

/Q   Does not display file names while copying.

/F   Display full source and destination file names while copying.

/L   Displays files that would be copied.

/H   Copies hidden and system files also.

/R   Overwrites read-only files.

/T   Creates directory structure, but does not copy files. Does not include empty directories or subdirectories. /T /E includes empty directories and subdirectories.

/U   Copies only files that already exist in destination.

/K   Copies atrributes. Normal Xcopy will reset read-only attributes.

/N   Copies using the generated short names.

/O   Copies file ownership and ACL information.

/X   Copies file audit settings (implies /O).

/Y   Suppresses prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an existing destination file.

/-Y   Causes prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an existing destination file.

/Z   Copies networked files in restartable mode.

The swith /Y may be preset in the COPYCMD environment variable. This may be overridden with the /-Y on the command line.

The XCOPY command may differ depending on OS version you are running. To ensure the correct commands at the DOS prompt type xcopy /? to list the commands on your version of xcopy as listed above.

Just thought it was appropriate for this string. We all should keep up on the older command line stuff!

More than I needed to know about XCOPY but I know it will definitely come in handy one of these days! Thanks for the info.