help! system recovery isnt working blue screen of death does

help!

I have recently have done a full system upgrade. I have Vista. after the driver upgrades and everything the comp restarted and all of a sudden my broadcom wireless adapter wasnt working. so i did some investigating and found that broadcom and hp/compaq suck when it comes to wireless adapters this problem has happened to lots. anyways. i went through some trouble shooting and followed the advice of a few peoples threads i have read else where. I ended up dong a system recovery to the point just before i upgraded my drivers. it worked broadcom is recognized again. so i decided to do the upgrade again minus the wireless adapter. unfortunetly one of the threads advised to remove the battery from the laptop and perhaps windows will recognize the adapter. i forgot to put the battery pack back in. i had to go to the living room where the wireless router is to plug strait into the router. because i was not in the office i had to unplug a lamp to plug in my laptop. i left to get some dinner and when i returned i found my vomp off and unplugged and the lamp on. my wife had done this so she could read. she unplugged my computer mid upgrade and now everytime i try to start windows i get the blue screen of death telling me to remove any hardware i have recently installed. so i figure it got pretty screwed up being that it lost power. there are few things i care about on my computer and unfortunetly i have not backed them up any where. How do i recover my art work off my hard drive before doing a system restore. I have hundreds of hours invested in this book im working on and need to not lose these. any help will be appreciated.