A quick rundown of my computer....it is on loan from my Internet school that I go to...and it is also a dell...

Now...I have a problem with it. Last night...we had a really bad wind storm. The power flickered on and off for a few seconds. While that was happening I had my computer on...so after the power stayed on...the computer turned itself back on. Well...I watched it come back on. It seemed normal...The Dell screen, the black screen with the bar on it and the window's logo screen.

Then the normal "Please wait....windows is starting up" and the "Accessing login information" prompts came up. and the computer logged me in as usual. And then the "Loading Personal settings" prompt came up...still loading normal.

The task bar and the clock came up. The Volume, Key board and the little Winzip Icons next to the clock came up. But it didn't load the Virus scan and Yahoo messenger Icons. Nor did the desktop load. It just stopped!

I have been to other forums to read post and they all said the same thing. The surge fried the motherboard. Even if it was plugged in to a surge bar...

Please tell me what is going on here! I have irreplaceable things on my computer...that I have made...I don't want to loose it !

Thanks in advance....

P.S. A question....If the guy that fixes my computer transplants the hard drive from my computer to another, will I still have what I have saved like my sites and stuff?

I cant imagin the computer booting that far if the board was fried .try hitting the f8 key on bootup and go into safe mode .