[andrewas]

1) That connector was poorly designed, it seems to be *very* prone to getting jamed. I've broken skin pulling those things out. Best way is to work it horizontaly, that distorts the socket and might just let you get it.

Also, some manufacturers have their monkeys *glue* the cable in. This is evil, but a stanley knife will sort it in no time. On the glue, not the cable.

2) Yes, but if you use the basic tools you will lose all data not backed up. Programs like partition magic will let you save at least part of the data.

3) If you boot to DOS, you need to run win.com, which is in the c:\windows directory. But I don't know if winME will load up this way.