Dell Inspiron 600m- Firefox and IE

Hello,
For the last several months my laptop has been a mess. When I try to open Firefox or Internet Explorer it either will not pull it up at all, or if it does it will be blank and will not go to any web addresses I type in. I have Limewire and it will connect to the internet and let me download music so I don't think it's an internet connection problem. Besides this though, everything is messing up really. Although Limewire will let me download music, now when I try to play the song, nothing happens. Every once in awhile Firefox will pull up my homepage, Yahoo. It will load a portion of the page but nothing else will work. If I try to type in anything on the Yahoo search box, it takes me to an error page. If I completely restore my laptop what are the chances that will fix it? I keep reading to hold down "ctrl" and press "f11" while it's rebooting.....should I try this? I don't know what else to do. I have over 1,000 pictures that I don't want to lose so will this erase my pics? I have tried to copy them to a flash drive but half the time it doesn't work right...this could be because I bought a cheap usb flash drive off Ebay, it doesn't even have a brand name on it. ugh....I need help please!? :(