Safe Mode will NOT load

[Vampyrinia]

First off I wanted to know why my pc was so slow and I wanted to go into safe mode and run AVG but it just froze after trying to start it. Second, I come home and my windows xp would not start up it kept giving me that error message about " We are sorry for the inconvienence........" So... I called Dell and paid for them to "fix it". We went into BIOS and Setup alot and the tech finally decided to tell me to Repair my windows . So I followed the tech's instructions by turning off the pc, with the windows cd inside and then hitting f12 then the cd prompt then getting the chkdsk /r which fixed my windows.
Now... it takes forever to load and it seems worse than before and the tech called back to do more "fixing". OK... she took control of my pc and removed all but the vital programs for start up. Then we went into  the Dell diagnostics to check things there.  We restarted my pc and first my desktop wallpaper was gone but that is not a problem but... my CD/DVD RW drive is not recognized.
I have been researching this here and I will check the Control Panel-System-Hardware-Device Manager-(check to reinstall it)
I will also go into BIOS and check to see if it was disabled there.
(I'm at work right now and cannot do this til tonight)
The Tech will not be able to help me again til Sunday due to the holiday.  She wants to Wipe out my HD and restore to factory default..which I do NOT want to do cause I have over 5,000 mp3s that I paid for and I don't know how to burn them once I fix my burner.
She said I could burn them on a DVD. do I need to zip them first or what?
I also dl Adaware and it got rid of 158 entries but AVG found nothing. ewido removed 50 entries.
AND... I cannot get Norton to uninstall!
Any Help appreciated...

[Calum]

OK, a lot of things to take in there.

AND... I cannot get Norton to uninstall!

Norton is hard to uninstall.  I believe Soybean has the best method to remove it.

I also dl Adaware and it got rid of 158 entries but AVG found nothing. ewido removed 50 entries.

That's a lot of viruses and malware you had there, so you may still be infected.
Download, install, update and run Spybot: S&D, it's a useful addition to your defences.
Also run the online virus scans.
A large amount of malware prevention and removal tools can be found here.

She said I could burn them on a DVD. do I need to zip them first or what?

You could just burn it as a data disk, although they may not fit on one disk, in which case you'd have to spread them across several DVDs.  Zipping them would make them into one file but would not significantly reduce the size.
An external hard disk is a good investment for backup purposes.
Hope this helps somewhat.

[Vampyrinia]

Good Morning Calum..Good to hear from you again!
I have Spybot S/D and it found nothing (forgot to mention that)
This may sound crazy but do you think if I uploaded them ( my Mp3s) to a file sharing site temporarily until I could d/l them back onto my pc that would work?
I heard RapidFire is good....
I will not use Rapidshare..its too picky
I wish I could just take the whole music folder and make it smaller somehow....
Plus... What's up with my Safe Mode???

[Calum]

Good morning?
It's mid-afternoon here . . . time zones get on my nerves, I can never keep track.
If Spybot found nothing you're probably clean, but I'd be inclined to run ewido, avg and Adaware again to make sure.
A Hijack this log may also help identify any remaining malware.

This may sound crazy but do you think if I uploaded them ( my Mp3s) to a file sharing site temporarily until I could d/l them back onto my pc that would work?

That wouldn't work, unless I'm misunderstanding you.  What exactly do you mean by a file sharing site?
You could upload them to an online storage facility, but it would take a long time.

I wish I could just take the whole music folder and make it smaller somehow....

Zipping it would make it a little smaller, but because they're already compressed it wouldn't make a lot of difference unfortunately.
You could convert all the files to a lower bitrate - the trade off is that it would take a long time and would reduce the quality.

Plus... What's up with my Safe Mode???

I don't know, what is up?
What exactly is wrong with it?
You said AVG froze in safe mode, but you said you then went through all the Dell troubleshooting, so how is safe mode now?

[Vampyrinia]

Actually I said I WANTED to run Avg in safe mode but it (Safe Mode would never load-it froze up) and I had to restart my pc.

After all the  "troubleshooting" by Dell my Safe mode is still freezing

[Vampyrinia]

The file sharing site is called mediafire.com
Sorry my mistake...

[Calum]

mediafire is what I meant by online storage.
I think of file sharing as P2P.
If you want to use mediafire, consider this (from their site):

MediaFire was designed to host files to share with others. We do not recommend that you use it to backup unique copies of files that cannot be replaced if they should become inaccessible on MediaFire for any reason.

So bear that in mind before committing your files to it.

Actually I said I WANTED to run Avg in safe mode but it (Safe Mode would never load-it froze up) and I had to restart my pc.
 
After all the  "troubleshooting" by Dell my Safe mode is still freezing  

OK, I see now.
So when you try and boot to safe mode it just freezes up, even if you don't try and do anything?
I think that a reformat and clean install is best - if you can find a way to back up your files.

[Vampyrinia]

Thanks! I was afraid of that
Now to figure out how to save 5000 music files.... :-/

[GX1_Man]

How to backup your files depends on what subscription service or site they were downloaded from. Some DRM practices make this difficult, others not so. If you have an iPod and use iTunes this is rather easy.

An external hard drive is another option, although this is not a good place for the ONLY copies of the files.

[Vampyrinia]

Everything is FIXED!
the Tech had me to repair my windows xp and now everything is working.  
I didnt lose any of my files and I'm so glad!
Anyway we put the windows reinstallation cd in and turned the pc off
Then turned it on and let it download then chose R (repair) after hitting enter
There are 2 places to choose R and the first is not the one to choose...
Then it had me to restart F3 and all was well...
Even my cd/dvd burner was working again...
I wish I had found this forum before I called tech support cause everything I read about how to fix things was what the tech had me do...
Oh well 42.50 well spent anyway!
Thanks yall!

[patio]

At $42.50 consider yourself very fortunate...you got off easy and have all your data.

Nothing could be better.

Now go out and purchase Acronis True Image or another HDD imaging program and do regular backups and burn them to DVD...

Take your almost nightmare and turn it into a positive learning experience.

patio.   8-)