I've been trying to start my computer but all I get is the black screen that asks me if I want to start windows in safe mode. Then it just shuts off again and trys to reboot. HELP! I don't have any of my installation disks (I never made them when I bought the computer) and everything is factory installed. If I need to buy another copy of windows, so be it, but I don't want to lose my information on the computer (music files, wedding pics, etc) HELP!

You have at least a couple of options. First you can probably buy restore disks from HP. Second you could remove the harddrive and install as a slave drive in a different computer to access the files. Third, you could buy a second harddrive and Windows CD and install windows to the new drive while connecting the old drive as a slave. Fourth, you could use a live version of Linux such as Knoppix to attempt to copy the files to another source. Other possible sources include your CD/DVD burner and external drives. Take care with any restore you perform. I am not familiar with the method HP uses but there is destructive and non-destructive restore.

Usually the restore disks will clean all the info off the drive. It puts the machine back to what it was from the factory.

When it begins to boot up did you try to press F8 key and enter safe mode? Before you get all reload happy, there are fairly simple ways to get your data saved off to other media. Don't panic just yet. You may have to get a knoppix cd (or other type of diag cd free off net) and learn a bit on how to save your data. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10