Disabled "Server" (Lanman) Service

I am having the same stalling issue on my vista home premium laptop. It began with the failure of my maxtor external harddrive. I was trying to move photos from a camera to the external drive on my laptop when everything froze. Upon restart, the LanmanServer now takes about 20 minutes to start and my Maxtor drive is no longer recognized at all. I've tried several recovery tools to no avail.
I'm at a total loss. I've found very little useful information on how to resolve the Lanman issue and I may have lost 10 years of photos.
Please don't remind me that externals are 'temporary' storage. I know this. I have backups for much of the data lost but not the most recent additions to the drive, mostly my babies first active Christmas. I'm very depressed.
Any help is greatly appreciated and you'll forever be adored.

Thanks!