Toshiba Satellite; Virus or Hard drive?

Hello,

I have no idea if I am in the right section, but here goes:

A few months ago, my laptop randomly shut off. I thought nothing of it, rebooted, and restored. About a week ago my laptop randomly restarted; prior to restarting, the screen went black with an inch thick blue line at the bottom of the screen. A friend advised me to back up my files in safe mode on an extended hard drive; I may have a virus. Best Buy advise me to back up my files because my hard drive could be dying and to purchase another laptop. I decided to get an extended hard drive[Toshiba] to back up my files. Every time I try to back up my files in safe mode my laptop shuts off(as if I held the on/off button). I tried to back up my files in normal mode; my laptop screen goes black with that nice thick blue line at the bottom of the screen, then shuts off. Mind you, I do have a bunch of files; I only have 6.94GB left out of 225GB. Is their anyone who can help me? Almost every file I have is needed,and those I can not lose. Is it my hard drive or a virus, and how do I fix it? Please help because I am about to shoot my laptop.

Thanks for your time and patience.

You can remove the hard drive from the laptop and connect it to a working PC in order to recovery the files. You can either use an external enclosure or use and adapter SATA/IDE to USB converter. These can usually be found reasonably priced at a local electronics store.

Is the blue line present when in Safe Mode as well?
Has the laptop fan and vents been cleaned lately?
Does it matter if the laptop is running on battery or power adapter?

How is your network going is it crashing? My toshiba satelite has been having loads of issues lately aswill?