I'd second/third/fourth the suggestions to boot from Linux.
But personally I might go even further... do you have a spare usb external drive that might be big enough to take an image of the laptop's drive? If not, maybe the situation might justify buying such a drive?
Then, having booted from Linux, take a copy of the stricken disk using 'dd', and use that as the source for any attempts at data salvage. You can just mount such an image, and it will look just like the stricken disk, but that approach reduces the penalty if you may make the damage any worse, as the original disk remains untouched.
You could do the same using a networked drive, of course.
I won't offer the specific incantations for 'dd' or fir 'mount' because, even though I'm confident what they might be, I'm sure certain other forum members will be even more confident.