Boot Up Problem

So, I have a major problem. I have an Averatec 3250 notebook computer running XP home. It has a mobile AMD athalon processor.

Last night, I put my computer to sleep. This morning, I came down to find a bizarre situation. The computer was no longer asleep. It was fully on (including the wireless card) with the fan running and everything. It was the hottest that I've ever seen it; so hot that I could not hold it comfortably. I flipped open the lid, and the computer was at a bios screen (not the bios screen that I'm used to seeing, but one I had never seen). I wasn't really sure what I was looking at, but it said press F1 to continue, so I did. If I'm remembering correctly, this threw me into what I will call "Screen 1":

Next, it goes into a Screen 2 which reads as follows:

I press a key, and it goes back to Screen 1. This is an endless cycle.

So, what is going on? I am fairly thoroughly backed up, so if I have to reinstall my opperating system, it's not the end of the world (though, ideally, I would like to be able to backup my music library first). I have the disks which came with the computer ("Recovery Media"). I have a backup of my registry (though I might take a bit to dig it up). I also have two other computers that run XP home, if that helps in anyway for the creation of some sort of rescue disk. Is it possible that some hardware got fried last night?

 

OK, I got it to boot by editing the order of boot up devices in the BIOS, roughly as per here. Before I shut down though, I want to backup a few choice things. I can take care of that, BUT:

I still want to figure out how this happened. So, my question essentially stands: what could have caused this?

Also, while I'm at it, does anyone know of a software (preferably free, but if not, I'll live) that effectively backs up your files and applications but NOT potential disk errors. Something where, were I to reinstall my OS, I could simply run the backup and recover my full system without bringing over past system problems.

 

Anyone? Any thoughts?