Unfortunately, it looks like your options are quite limited. Right now, these are the four main options I can think of...
1. Use the Windows Vista CD to perform a repair install of Windows. After it has completed, you should be able to access your files. However, there is no guarantee that it will work.
2. Reformat. This works 95% of the time, but you would lose all of your personal data. It's possible to recover it afterwards, but it's a long and difficult process with no guarantees.
3. Take it into a computer shop. If you can find a trustworthy shop (this is hard to do, by the way), they should be able to recover your system for you. However, this is the most expensive route to take. I would do it, but some things simply can't be done over the internet.
4. Find a computer-savvy friend who could pull out your hard drive and set it up as a slave in another computer and then use a good anti-virus scanner. This is what the computer shop would most likely do. If you have another computer lying around the house, you could perhaps try doing it yourself, but it would require an external harddrive encasement (about $15) or a special cable (about $10), depending on the schematics of your laptop. Please note, however, that if you do this, you run the risk of infecting the other computer.
Of course, before trying out one of these options, there are a couple of things you can try. You say when trying to use your computer, the programs will lock up. Well, then let's try something that's not an actual program...
Go
HERE to download the latest version of Silent Runners. It's a VBScript that performs a very deep scan of your computer. For a test, we'll just try the minimal scan to see if we have any luck. Download the file to your desktop and run it in Safe Mode. At the prompt, click No and just sit back for a minute or two. It runs in the background, so it may look like nothing is happening. After a couple of minutes a Notepad file called Startup Programs should appear. If so, attach that to your next post. If you've waited more than 5 minutes without anything appearing, then it most likely didn't work, as it's fairly quick and should not take that long.
Another thing to try...copy all of the text in the quote box below and paste it into Notepad...
dir C:\WINDOWS /a h > win.txt
dir C:\WINDOWS\system32 /a h > sys32.txt
dir "C:\Program Files" /a h > pf.txt
With Notepad still open, go to File > Save As. Click on the arrow next to Save As Type and select all files. Name the file
scan.bat and place it on your infected computer's desktop. Double-click on the file and in only a few seconds, three Notepad files should appear on your desktop:
win.txt,
sys32.txt, and
pf.txt. Attach these files in your next post (you will have to use a flashdrive to transfer them to your working computer). To attach files...while on the
Post reply page of the forum, click on Additional Options underneath the text box. You will then see an option to attach files.
If this works, it will take me a long time to go through all of the information to sort out infections. It could take me at least a day to find them. And I won't be able to find infections in all areas of your computer, but I can find what's lurking in the most popular spots. With any luck, we might be able to disable whatever's locking up your computer so we can perform normal scans.
If my suggestions don't work, then you may be stuck with options #1-4.
Another possibility to consider is that this might not be an infection. Many infections don't work in Safe Mode, so it's possible that we're dealing with a hardware problem here. However, I have been dealing with several infections this week that
do work in Safe Mode, so it's hard to say what this culprit is right now.
