To elaborate further, what will happen when you boot from the live ISO is everything will run in RAM (Random Access Memory) and will be forgotten if it's not saved on the drive itself when you shutdown the computer. It should be able to work even with the BIOS (I think it may be BIOS) failure.
xeiavica
There is hope. Burn a linux Live ISO such as linux mint to a DVD or USB, you can then browse your computer and salvage whatever can be saved.