I turn on the laptop and the acer logo comes up, then a black screne saying windows failed to start a hardware or software change could be the cause, and the option…launch startup repair, but after the startup repair finishes it says the system will work normally after the restart.

Then it restarts and the black load screen with the green windows bar come up but without the windows logo….then the blue screen of death comes up!!!

I’ve tried system restore but it says the acer disk has a hardware problem and safe mose won’t work either….

Is there anyway for me to get my picture files off the laptop?

I’m running Windows XP Pro if that has any bearing on your recommendations.
I use Mozilla Firefox almost exclusively to surf the Internet and can’t think of a time when I have gotten a pop-up window while using it.

Some of my desktop apps, however, are associated with Internet Explorer and open IE on launch (as much as I wouldn’t like them to). That’s when and where I get an almost immediate onslaught of pop-up windows.
Ad-Aware keeps getting mentioned so I download a trial. Is it worth purchasing?