You can do a system restore from DOS. See if this helps:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;279736&Product=winme

I now get the same error message as before, but with progman.exe as the culprit.  But I've learned how to run restore from DOS.  Thanks.

Will now try removing the hard drive and installing it as a slave on a desktop to download the data.