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I've got a reasonably old PC (core 2 duo ~ 2010) that refuses to boot anymore. I've tried the repair option from the W7 disc but no luck.

I'm thinking of a a live CD/DVD Linux distro to boot up from so I can see if there's anything I can read and retrieve from the boot hd. Any recommendations on something that would work for a pc of that vintage?

Puppy. That'll boot on nearly anything.

Yeah, go with puppy. I ran puppy on a single core ThinkPad with 512mb of ram for while.

Have a feeling there was a Version of Mint that worked well on older hardware as well.

I've got Ubuntu running on a Core 2 Due E6400 with 2gb of a RAM but I don't run many applications. Will be 'upgrading' to Core 2 Quad and 4gb of RAM when I can be bothered to rebuild.

I previously used a lubuntu based distro which is more lightweight and ran a lot better.

Thanks guys. I looked through a pile of discs and found a copy of Lubuntu 14.10. It worked a treat.

Next challenge, to get the boot HDD going again. Will removing the CMOS battery for a bit reset everything or will I have to hunt for a couple of pins? Mobo is an Asus p5k.

Take the battery out, wait about 4 or 5 mins then replace it, that will fully reset the bios.

What Peter has said will work fine.

If you want to do the same thing without waiting there are a couple of blue plastic jumpers which you will see below the SATA ports. The one on top (nearest the SATA ports) should be located on the two leftmost pins. If you move it across one pin to the right (so the left pin is now exposed) and keep it there for 5 seconds before moving it back to the original position, it will reset the BIOS.

Obviously make sure you're powered down and unplugged before doing this.

I have the same board which will also be used in my Ubunutu system eventually :)