If your PQSERVICE Partition is intact and Alt+F10 doesn't work, you can try the following steps:
First of all, here is how to find out if the PQService partition is intact:
1) Go to Control Panel (Classic View)
2) Administrative Tools
3) Computer Management
4) On the left, click "Disk Management"
5) If on the right, you see a partition called "PQService - EISA Configuration", your recovery partition is intact. (In my case, the partition was 4.3 GB with 17% free disk space, which meant that there was a lot of data on it)
If your partition is intact, try the following:
1) Download Super Fdisk Bootable CD from
http://www.ptdd.com/manual2.htm or
here
2) Burn the iso on a CD
3) Boot your laptop/netbook using the Bootable CD.
4) once the software loads, you will see the two partitions. PQService will be inactive and C drive will be active.
5) In my case, the mouse was not working, so i went ahead anyway, and by pressing the space bar, i managed to exchange the status of the partitions. So now the PQService was active and C was hidden and inactive.
6) Press Alt+F4 to close the software. You will get a dialog box to save the changed state. Press "Yes".
7) Reboot.
8) Hopefully, you will see the recovery screen. Go ahead and recover from Backup.
9) After recovery, when the computer reboots, you need to go back to Super F Disk and exchange the partition status again, so repeat steps 3 to 7 again, such that PQService is inactive and C is active. If you don't do this, your computer will remain in recovery mode.
10) After reboot, you should have windows restored normally.
(I had d2d disabled in the bios, but i don't know if that made any difference)