thanks for the prompt reply...
Well... the COM ports part I will try as soon as I get my hands back on my machine... but as far as recovery console is concerned.. i never had a password for admin... my friend had a similar problem a week back and he had a password for admin which he tried... and which (as expected frm MS) did not work... he had to format and resinstall .. i have 30 gigs of info on this baby which I cant give up !!!