Ok, I'm not that PC savvy, but I need some help! Our PC crashed and I'm afraid we will loose all our data. Not sure if we got a virus or what? Here's what happened:
My husband has created and maintained several small websites using FrontPage. He was updating a site with FrontPage, and creating a link on that page to another page he created. He clicked on the link to verify that it would open a new page, and it did. When he closed the page, a bunch of new tabs started opening on Internet Explorer, the same page that he had created a link to. They would not stop, and then it finally froze. The only way to shut down was to manually hold in the power button to turn it off. He attempted to turn it back on, and it got to the screen where it gave the options to open in safe mode, last known good configuration, etc.
If we choose the last known good configuration, it goes right to the Windows Loading screen, and the blue bar goes back and forth, then the screen turns black like it's going to load, but the PC turns off and then restarts on its own.
If we choose any of the other options (i.e. safe mode), it shows rows and rows of the same message (like MSDOS? Remember, I’m not too computer savvy!) and then it just turns off and restarts on its own.
I’m not sure if this is a virus or maybe a corrupt windows file (that’s what the guy at best buy said)? There have been no recent software or hardware installations, and we have Norton anti-virus that runs regular checks. I have checked other threads on here, but all of the solutions provided only work if you can start in safe mode. If we have to re-install Wondows, how can we make sure we don’t loose all our data? We have tons of pictures, videos, recorded music (my husband is a musician and does some home recording), websites we have created and thousands of hours of work into some of these things. Best Buy said it could be up to $500 to fix, plus the $70 just to have them look at it.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!!!