BleepingComputer.com: Recovering Files from a bricked vista

My Uncle gave me a computer to fix, with windows vista on it. (I don't know the service pack because it didn't boot up for long.)
Upon boot up, it would hang as soon as programs were opened, regardless of what the program was. At first I thought spyware, but now I realize it is a badly fragmented disk.
After booting up only a few times, I would receive the BSOD for Safe mode, Normal Mode, and Repair Your Computer.
This computer is virtually unrepairable at this point, seeing as I'm guessing it was never chkdsk'd.

So now I'm trying to recover the files off the vista computer.
My first attempt was booting into Ubuntu and trying to mount the windows partition, but it won't even mount because it is so badly fragmented. (NTFS is inconsistent.)
I don't have a recovery disk for Vista, but i do have an XP cd kicking around.
Can I use the chkdsk recovery option on the XP cd to fix the issues with Vista? Even just to get it to mount would be good.

Thanks for any assistance you can provide!

check out testdisk
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
for data recovery
i have been lucky to pull some decent data without being able to mount in ubuntu.
you need to be a little up on your command skills.

to fix it after you get your data just format it and do a clean install. that is if the drive isn't botched.