Help! Computer totally frozen/uresponsive!

[Bender]

Hi, I have a PC with windows XP with a new/serious problem.

My computer froze up during an application (video game) and I did ctrl+alt+del to get out of it. After some frustration, I shut off the computer by hitting the power button  on my surge protector.

When I turned my computer back on, everything loaded up except  now its totally unresponsive! My keyboard can't affect the computer at all. The mouse moves on the screen but I can't click or manipulate the desktop or start button. When the mouse is moved over the taskbar/start button, the pointer turns into the hourglass. Otherwise, I can't get anything to work on my PC.

How can I fix this?

I'm somewhat experienced with troubleshooting.  Any info or help would be greatly appreciated! I've got a lot of imporant files on that computer with no backups anywhere. I'm freaking out! Help! Thanks.

[street1 (RIP)]

Welcome to Computerhope Bender.


Do you have a standard PS/2 mouse and keyboard you can use?

In other words are the keyboard and mouse you are using now USB?

Note:When you get this working fine again think about a secondary
Hard drive as slave for backup,and Acronis.I know 20/20 hindsight
but, this is when you make the commitment not to get caught again.


SNAP!

[GX1_Man]

The data is probably safe and you could slave that hard drive into another machine, or use a Linux Live CD to save it.

http://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1152393515

Do you have a real Windows CD if that is required?