can't boot laptop

I have an inspiron 9000, about 4 years old. It's on it's 2nd HD, and I upgraded the memory about a year ago. Until yesterday, all was fine. Windows XP.

Now, when I turn it on, it goes through the dell screen, and says I can push f2 for setup, f12 for boot options. If I let it continue, it goes to a blank screen (with power, it still glows) but the HD kicks on for 1 second or so, then nothing. The fan still runs...

Boot options:
Boot from HD: same.
Boot from CD: Same (have original OS CD from Dell, and also tried a friends disk)
Diagnostics: works fine! says all my hardware is OK. Checked the HD, because that seemed the likely source. After scanning, said it was fine.
Cardbus NIC/ Onboard NIC: Don't know what they are, but they didn't work. Grapics seem fine, with all kinds of pretty lines and bars during diagnostics.

I can get into BIOS, and am considering restoring factory defaults, but I never changed anything there...

Anyway, I proceeded to hit F8 before windows would normally appear just after the Dell boot screen. I have all of the safemode options.
Last good config: Nothing.
Safe mode: It displays a list of files, and loads:
multi(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)/windows/system32/ntoskrnl.exe
multi(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)/windows/system32/hal.dll
multi(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)/windows/system32/KDCOM.dll
multi(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)/windows/system32/bootvid.dll
multi(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)/windows/system32/config/system
multi(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)/windows/system32/c_1252.nls
multi(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)/windows/system32/c_437.nls
multi(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)/windows/system32/l_intl.nls
multi(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)/windows/fonts/vgaoem.fon
multi(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)/windows/apppatch/drvmain.sdb/
multi(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)/windows/system32/drivers/ACPI.sys

then it freezes and goes no further. I've given it 15 minutes, to see if there is just something making it take a long time, but nothing happens.


Please help, if possible. I just want it to boot up one time, so I can get my files transferred to my portable HD, then I don't care so much if it goes dead. It was a great computer, but it is 4 years old... But I have family pics, work files, and financial docs that I really don't want to lose...