How to discover Windows computer over the network?

Hello everyone.

My Windows laptop is not booting and for some reason I can't launch the Recovery Environment from the OS DVD so I decided to create a bootable USB stick with some other OS residing on it that would allow me to transfer the files from that unbootable laptop's HDD to another laptop over the network.

I would like to know how easy it is to setup Alpine so that it discovers a laptop over the network and whether it can access the internet out of the box (like Windows) without me tempering with network settings.

I would really appreciate your help in clarifying this.