It sounds like a corrupt registry. This can be fixed relatively easily without losing anything from the hard disk.
Assuming it doesn't have an optical drive (CD/DVD) you'll need an external optical drive or a USB bootable copy of Linux. With the external optical drive you'll be able to use a Windows CD to access the repair console and copy across backup registry files. With a USB bootable copy of Linux you'll be able to do the same but the process is slightly different.
You're other option is to remove the hard disk and plug it into a working PC using a USB-Sata cable. You'll then be able to access the disk as a removable drive, backup the files you need and restore the registry.
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