Mint is in its own partition.
The your Windows is safe.
There doesn't seem to be a 'bootloader'...
There is.
... with choices for the OS to boot.
That's the issue. "with choices for the OS to boot". That can be fixed.
I don't much want to run Windows...
Smart man!
but I would have saved some files to DVD if I had known.
Those files are still there, safe and sound in your Windows partition, if I understand everything you said correctly.
Linux can easily mount and read your Windows partition (and write to it too, if that's what you want). You don't have to boot Windows to be able to read those files from the Windows partition. Then you can burn a DVD, of your Windows files, but you'll be burning it from Linux. Windows can read (some) Linux partitions if you install some stuff and jump through hoops. However, Linux car read Windows partitions without those hoops. I do it all the time.
If you bring up the "file manager" GUI in LinuxMint, it will look something like the screenshot below. There are all kinds of different ways you can customize a file manager, so yours may not look exactly like mine. But you should be able to figure things out. The area in the red circle is where you should find your Windows partition(s). Just double-click on one or more of those devices and you should be able to read them. If you end up looking at something foreign, just double-click on one of the other things until you run into your Windows stuff. If you did indeed klobber your Windows partition during the Linux install, this simple method won't work. But it doesn't hurt for you to go look and investigate. Once you have access to your Windows files, it's a simple matter to burn them to a DVD, email them, copy them to a thumbdrive or external harddisk, or whatever else you might want to do.
