Laptop Virus preventing from booting - No F8

Hello,




I really hope someone can help me.

I think i have a virus on my laptop as i am unable to start it up at all. The very first 'Dell' screen will appear and then a black screen with a blinkning cursor in the top left hand corner will appear and nothing happens after that!

This all started on Saturday when i had a message pop up which looked like it came from an msn contact asking me:

'is this you on pic :) 'link' (the link was something to do with facebook / something limited / photos php)

To be honest i was trying to do a few things at once and wasnt really paying attention to what i was doing, and i very stupidly clicked the link and then, even worse, i actually clicked yes to dowloading some file!!!

The file downloaded and then each of my msn contacts started flashing up extremely quickly in alphabetical order! As soon as i realised that each of my contacts was being sent the same message i pressed the power button and turned off the laptop.

Ever since then the laptop has been doing what i described and will not start properly at all :(

I am absolutely devestaed, i have had this laptop for four years and it is completely full of photos, very important documents, emails, messages etc. etc. I havent got anything backed up and i just feel completely helpless.

I have spent the last two days searching the internet for solutions to this problem and i have tried many, many things but nothing seems to work.

I found out the original disks which i had with the laptop and tried to repair xp with it, and everything seemed to work properly, the files were being copied and everything, but then it said it was going to restart and powered off - when it tried to restart again it was just back to the same problem screen from the beginning!

I can access F2 and F12 when it first starts up, but cannot access F8, so cannot start in safe mode or last known working configuration.

I really have tried everything i can think of and everythingi have read on the internet, but if anyone can help me then i would be forever grateful!!

The laptop is a Dell Inspiron 1300.

If there is no way to get it working again, then is there any way i can back up my files without being able to boot it properly? as i would like to do this and then try reinstalling xp from the cd.

Please, please, pleas help me!!

Tammy x