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?