I recover data from ancient business PCs and keep a variety of tools including an old USB Sony DVD burner which reliably burns live CD/DVDs and boots from them. If I had OPs situation to deal with I'd connect the PATA drive to a USB adapter plugged into a modern machine then boot a live Linux with CHNTPW or live boot any of the nifty WinPE-ish live custom builds (some of which contain proprietary software so I'll not name them here). I used the trial version of CDRWIN on Windows boxes as I never had reason to burn at any speed over 1x. If the drive worked before it's likely still sound. If you cannot try the drive in another PC don't assume it's the drive. Thread necromancy but having a very old live CD fetish I learned to burn them at the slowest speed possible for best odds of successful boot.
