Safe Mode Prompt Loop

It all started after a black out around the city from some bad storm. Lights flickered, etc.

Ever since then my computer's been stuck in the safe mode prompt window where they ask you to choose to use:

- safe mode
- safe mode with network
- safe mode with command prompt
and
- normal windows mode

despite choosing any of the above options, my computer blacks out, restarts and am faced with the dreaded safe mode prompt window again.

I've tried going into the OS preferences through F8 but that doesn't seem to work.

Personally i think something may have fried itself during the black out, but i'm not sure. Neither am i good with computer hardware... so i'm not gonna try to do anything i'm not familiar with.

Preferably i'd like to be able to NOT resort to formating my computer, so any ideas?

Hello, Yururin! Of course we have ideas! It's always helpful if you post information about what version of Windows you run, and your computer make and model. If you got a Windows CD with your computer, the first thing I'd try is to boot from the CD, and at the Welcome to Setup screen press R to enter the recovery console. You may need to press a number key to choose a Windows installation, but there is usually only one choice. When prompted for a password, you can generally press ENTER. At this point you should be at a command prompt and you should type chkdsk /r then press enter. This starts a repair process that may fix your problem. Please report the results, because even a failure can tell us a great deal about your problem that can help with further troubleshooting. If you want to read more about using the recovery console see: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654/en-us

Additionally, it seems from what you are saying that it does attempt to load safe mode. When it loads you see a list of files, what's the last one you see? Or does it get all the way to the login screen before it restarts?