Hey everybody.

Thanks in advance for any help, advice, input, etc. I appreciate it.

I have a Dell computer running Windows XP.
Version 2002. Service pack 3. Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.66GHz 2.65GHz, 512 MB of RAM.

About two days ago my computer started freezing at the screen that reads "windows is starting up" during startup and later started freezing at the "welcome" screen. I currently rebooted it in safe mode. I thought it might be a virus so I tryed to scan with that, but it would not even open. (My primary security program is Trend Micro but that will not open either in safe mode.) I downloaded the malicious software removal program on my laptop that I am using right now, and loaded it onto the pc with the problems. I am running that right now, but so far it hasnt found anything. It also will freeze on the screensaver during the scan. I dont think I downloaded anything in the past few days. My friend said that he saw some sort of spybot warning pop up about unwanted changes but he must have closed it before correctly dealing with it. I dont know if this has something to do with the problem. I have an external harddrive with almost nothing on it. Should I use that to copy files the old fashioned way in safe mode to the drive in case this is serious? I would just take word documents and any leftovers from my itunes library.

Thanks again for any help. I will do my best to follow any instructions given or to provide more information if it will help.

Thanks everybody!