I want to back up the info from there onto a CD and safe mode doesn't recognise the cd-drive (!)
You can use Knoppix from a cd first to back up you data onto a cd, if you have a second cd-rom, or a flash drive (or floppy...). Then you can try re-installing windows or Debian without worrying about deleting your data. You can get Knoppix from: http://www.knoppix.org/ -Mike