Ok, I am in a real bind. For the background story, go to this thread:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=805462

Now, what I need to do, is find anyway possible to get the data off my hard drive that I want to keep. This is basically just some personal files and my emails, everything else can go back to the manufacturer for wiping. I have tried physically removing the hard drive, but every other computer I have doesn't have the plugs required. The computer boots up, and I can listen for the sound of the login screen, and then type my username and password, and hear the sound it makes when loading the desktop. However, all my attempts to connect to the computer over the network are refused, save what I have done via Samba, which is just a single folder with some unimportant files in it. Winscp and SSH both get “connection refused”. It gets on the network and is assigned an IP address, it just won't let any other computer connect to it, save for that single sharing folder I set up.

So my question is, how do I –blindly-- allow a network connection to go through that will let me transfer the files I want to keep somewhere else (preferably with Winscp)? I know I hit ctrl-alt-enter to open up a terminal window and start typing. But everything I've tried has failed so far.

Can anyone please help me get connected to this machine? Also, pretty much the only files I would want to keep are in folders whose locations I have memorized, save the Evolution emails.