how do i find the name or location of a windows volume in order to use the mount command?

I obviously don't know what I am doing, but my Windows XP crashed so I am attempting to recover some of my files by booting through an ubuntu disk (with the "try out without installing" option)

I used the file browser and attempted to mount a volume listed as 40.0 GB Media, and got this error:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
$LogFile indicates unclean shutdown (0, 0)
Failed to mount ‘/dev/sda1′: Operation not supported
Mount is denied because NTFS is marked to be in use. Choose one action:

Choice 1: If you have Windows then disconnect the external devices by
clicking on the ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ icon in the Windows
taskbar then shutdown Windows cleanly.

Choice 2: If you don’t have Windows then you can use the ‘force’ option for
your own responsibility. For example type on the command line:

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/windrive -o force

Or add the option to the relevant row in the /etc/fstab file:

/dev/sda1 /mnt/windrive ntfs-3g force 0 0
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So I used the "mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/windrive -o force" command, which basically seemed to give information about the process of mounting. I closed the window at some point (hence my lack of ability to describe exactly what happened, apologies) and when I attempted the command again it said

mount: mount point /mnt/windrive does not exist

from what I understand, the basic form is "mount -t type device dir" but I have no idea how to find the information for type, device, or... dir.

Help is appreciated; please use layman's terms! :) Thanks.
 -Kasey