What, and change the habits of a lifetime?
This son is some 6 hours away, so can't just pop around to help. I did download Ubutu on my machine to see if it would work from the CD. It did, and have advised said son.
A pal suggested his going to another OS, and 64bit at that, may have muddied the waters. There is just the smallest chance Ubuntu may be able to see the files, but it is a small chance.
When this exact thing happened to me, I downloaded a trial version of some rescue software and it worked where there was nothing whatsoever showing under the OS. The trial version only did one file at a time, but tested the principal.
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EDIT. Changed on principle. Sooooooo dyslexic today.
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