Windows not booting (Black Screen) after displaying bios and computer info

A couple of days ago my computer stopped loading windows, when I try to boot from hard drive the computer displays it's normal white on black bios/computer information but when it should be displaying the 'windows loading' logo, the monitor just stays black.

I have tried booting in to safe mode but when safe mode tried to load it gets stuck on C:\windows\system32\config\system so I'm guessing that file is corrupt. After finding out I couldn't boot from hard drive at all, I booted in to my windows cd and thought about reformatting but chose not to since I wanted to back up. I then booted in to 'damn small linux' where I backed up some of the files to my mum's computer, now her computer has died as well, does this mean that it could be a virus?

After backing up what I needed I chose to go back and reformat and now my boot disk won't work either! My windows cd just loads a little then goes black, like the windows installation.

I am pretty much out of ideas except to get a different boot disk and try to install that and hope it doesn't go black.

Do you think it would do me any good to plug my hard drive in to a friends computer and try to reformat it there?

Anyway, I'd be happy to hear any ideas you've got.

Specs:
3500+ 64bit
6600GT 128mb
2*1gb corsair ram
400w power supply
250gb barracuda hard drive

 

If you think it might be a virus then I wouldn't try it in your friend's. Especially after you think it killed your mother's. Boot from the xp cd and choose the repair option. It goes through your system files and looks for any corrupted or missing files. It will replace them if it finds any.

 

Haha, I was thinking, plug the hard drive in to the other computer but not boot into it, just use that computer to reformat. I guess I'll not do that though.

As for repairing, I can't as my OS install disk is doing the same as the hard drive: loading a little then going black. I might install linux or something.

 

I can get in to bios and boot into bootable linux. Through linux I can copy files form my hard drive.

Does that mean it's a problem within my windows installation?

 

I can't get into windows.

Do you know of a good bootable OS which I can backup my files with? In damn small linux I can back up some files but the ones I need most aren't displaying. (documents and settings/administrator/mozilla firefox/ and documents and settings/administrator/desktop/)

 

Well I fixed my problem, incase anyone else gets this problem I'll explain how I fixed it.

Since I couldn't boot into my windows installation or windows install disk, I used damn small linux to back and killdisk to reformat.

Now I can reinstall windows.