[Hampshire] Boot disk/liveCD for Windows recovery?

Hi,

I generally try to stay away from supporting friends computer systems but
there are a few that I end up helping anyway...

So if i have a corrupt/virus infested M$ Windows machine and I want to
recover data from it what do people suggest?

I seem to recall there are live CDs designed for this very job which let
you run virus checkers (AVG?) and the like from the CD?

Is it worth using one or am I better off just booting Ubuntu and using
that to copy files off the HD?

Andy