Lionel,
your photos are safe mate as long as the hard drive works, two things you can do, take the hard drive out of that PC and plug it into another PC and you will be able to explore all the data on the drive and copy it off. (make sure you have the correct jumper settings on the drives)
you could also buy a 3.5 inch cd drive caddy for about £10, its just an external bay for a cd drive but it will also take a hard drive, you can then plug the hard drive in externally to your other PC and keep it as an external hard drive.
the other way to get the data off would be to boot from a linux disk but you are getting more complicated for no reason.
have you tried booting in safe mode? i cant remember if it bypasses the activation code......worth a try, press f8 whilst booting up and choose safe mode.
Im always willing to help so add me to msn to chat or PM me.
Andy