Help Retrieving files from a fucked flash drive - help please.

What it says on the tin.

Stick it in my PC, it says "cannot read data" or somesuch, stick it in the girlfriend's laptop it says "cannot install softwear" and error code 43. I *think* there may well be a physical problem with the connection rather than the data being corrupted - but in any event, I really, really, need to get the files off there, so any help appreciated - even if someone knows somewhere reliable I might be able to send it off to.

How good are you with a soldering iron, and why do you think it's a physical problem?

If it's a corrupted card and it's not a physical fault, I've had success using Testdisk

No experience at all with a soldering iron.

Think it's a physical problem because it hasn't been anywhere where it ought to have been possible for environmental factors to have corrupted the drive and because none of the PCs it has been used in have had viruses or anything that could have corrupted the drive. It's just got a load of word files in it, some of 'em in separate folders (things I'm after are previous job applications which were fairly lengthy as they had detailed person specs - just want to do what I've always done and recycle the relevant parts, rather than reinventing the wheel)

Well, I don't know that it's not currupted, so that's handy - cheers.

Hmmm, could be anything really. The utility I linked to above I successfully used on a SD card that had become corrupted and it had been nowhere else but inside the camera it was being used with.

code 43 is normally permissions aint it?

I use photorec on a mac, its a command line utility.