Won't Boot, Keeps Restarting

On my wifes computer there is a boot issue... i went into system config to disable programs from startup and I very stupidly also changed the start up selection. Now when I start the pc it only goes to the windows loading screen then the screen flashes and it restarts itself. I tried to repair it with my windows disk and i also tried to start it from last know working config,safe mode, ect. but nothing has worked. I have a lot of family pictures and videos from the time my son was born and i would really hate to reformat and lose all of that stuff. I have def learned my lesson to back up my data. If there is any help I would GREATLY aprichiate it. Im lost and Im hoping someone can help me.. thank again, jOn*

i also learned the hard way about backing irreplacable data up, since then i put a second hard drive in the computer so if a format was ever needed it wouldn't touch any of the data i need to keep.

worse case scenario is we will have to format, but do you have a second PC? that way we could take the hard drive out of this one and put it in there to back up your pictures before hand. *just to be on the safe side*

could you confirm that it reboots even when you tried booting it into safe mode please

Yeah it restarts even when trying in safe mode. . also I do have another working pc... Thank you for your time and help, i aprichiate it alot. . I will take your advice on the extra hard drive , especially how cheap they are these days its worth not losing everything. .. thanks*

Can anyone help me ?

to me it looks like a bad power supply.
sometimes they go bad bad sttill working but when the cpu demands more power/watt then the power supply fails so the motherboard restarts...

the only thing that seems kinda wierd about it being the power supply is it happend right after i messed with those boot settings (1st tab in msconfig) and i clicked restart,... from that point on it never completely loaded again.. I regret bening so sloppy about where my files were at I have folders with important stuff and pictures and files, videos of my sons first christmas,vacation, birthday ect. all over the place mixed in with different softwear folders and editings stuff... i just worry if just searching through c drive i will miss a lot of stuff because a lot of them didnt have file names assosiated with what they are most of them are just numbers from bulk uploading from my camera .. if i could just get it to load to the desktop i could fix it ... i already have the tools on a flash drive to fix the malware and virus that was giving me problems before i changes the boot settings and screwed it up .. . hard lesson to learn because these files are pricless. ... im to the point im about to drop it off and pay a pc store to fix it. .. i just had some luck with these guys helpping me w/fixing a virus in the past and I would rather drop a donation here than pay the guy down the street that dont have a very good rep but im out of options and the computer has just been sitting messed up for over a month... PLZ SOMEONE!!!!!! ( help me get this thing to boot )

i know what happened either the shell32.dll or msgina.dll was damaged in some way so you must preform a repair of windows ive had and identical problem and fȋxed it so find your product key

(this will not damage or remove any thing besides damaged windows files and any device drivers and a possible manual register i will tell hoe to do that later

thank you

now first of all do you have your product key?
second how recent is your xp CD?(when did you get it?)
and (if you got the xp CD before May,09) third does the computer you use for internet have a cd burner and do you have 1, 700 mb CD?

First, you have to recover your files.

There are a lot of live cds out there, for example:

http://www.slax.org/get_slax.php

If you don´t know what a live cd is, just think of it like an operating system that is not to install in your system so it is not going to make any damage to your data.

Download the iso and burn it:

http://www.slax.org/get_slax.php?download=iso

once you have done it you will see a desktop and if you have an external hd you can then copy your data to it.

When you have done it you can reinstall your operating system or do what you want to do.