Also i should add where im at in this awesome predicament ive gotten myself into its sitting at start up and its saying boot failure insert boot disc or diskette press any key when ready ive tried burning ubuntu iso's and its not working so please anyone give me some ideas. thanks

So basically im not so linux friendly i dont know anyone who is but my girlfriends computer crashed and all she can tell me is she thinks it had ubuntu on it. First thing i wanna do is wipe it clean and do it all over again but she will murder me if i dont at least try to salvage all her pictures. Is there anyone out there that can at least point me in the right direction to at minimum being able to salvage the files. Thanks.