Kachina, see if the machine will boot in safe mode.
Make sure the hard drive is the boot device in the bios.
Restart the machine and as soon as it starts up, begin tapping the F8 key. It should give you some choices on how you want to boot. If it does, choose safe-mode and see what it does
By doing this you'll bybass some of the possible hardware or virus/spyware problems.
Good luck.