@ Archades,
The coat hanger trick is described in this post:
http://rayshobby.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=559
I mistook the long bolts you are using to mount the base plate for pins to mount the cover.
It would be good if you could post a zip of the OSPi folder that was having the problem. I am also a Windows user but I will be moving my software development to a Linux system before long. A really useful piece of free software for moving files between a Windows system and the Pi is Winscp:
http://winscp.net/eng/index.php
You can copy the old OSPi folder from the Pi and zip it up on your windows system. With Winscp you can view the files on the Pi from your Windows machine and even edit them.
Dan