Trying this again--need help with close to dead laptop

Hi,
I posted a message yesterday but for some reason can't find it. My Dell laptop is basically unresponsive--I can move the cursor around however if I try to click on anything, nothing happens so I can't open programs, close windows, etc. I have gone through the stickies to see if there's anything I can do however since I can't even boot in safe mode or return to the last working settings (I can't select icons), I'm basically stuck. I believe that this problem was caused by a virus of some sort because Avast detected a trojan a few weeks back. I had it put in the chest and thought that would have solved the problem, but the computer basically just got slower and slower and now this. I would really appreciate some help with this as while I have most files backed up, there's some work that I need to retrieve!

Thanks,
Lisa