HP Pavillion dv1000 with Windows Xp won't startup

[ClaireHeidi]

Hi

I have a HP Pavillion dv1000 laptop and have Windows Xp. It has been working relatively fine(except the fact that it overheats sometimes but then I usually shutdown my computer either by going to the start menu and following the procedure of shutting down the computer or I will put my computer on standby or I will just directly press the power button on my laptop and then it will be cooled down and works fine). My problem is that on Saturday I was using my laptop, running the internet and some microsoft word documents. Well I wanted to close some word documents however they wouldn't close(usually if upon closing a document or my internet browser sometimes my computer will freeze and will open a new window saying that ''this program is not responding would you like to end now'' and I would press end now and then after a few minutes the program(s) would close and everything would work fine. However they wouldn't close on Saturday and my windows task manager wouldn't open when I tried(and it alwayss works). So I put my computer in stand by( the Word documents that could not be closed were still open and my internet browser was still open when I put my laptop into standby). But...instead of going into standby my computer's fans began making a rushing sound like as if they were working too much or overheating(sorry about the vocab I am not very good at computers). So I decided to shutdown my computer by holding down the power button and the computer closed. Then after 2 hours or so I press the power button to restart my computer and I got the regular windows xp loading screen buttttt then all I see is a blank blue wallpaper without any desktop items or start menu or anything! I only have a blue blank wallpaper and my mouse cursor. Please if anyone knows anything please help me

P.S. If anyone knows a way to fix this problem without having to reformat the whole computer(because I have important files that I can not afford to lose) that would be much appreciated!

Thanks

[bigBonehead]

Try booting into Safe Mode by hitting F8 while the computer is starting up. then scroll down to 'Last Known Good Configuration' and hit enter... see what that does, and post back.