Acer 5250-BZ853

Hello,

I have a bit of a problem! I purchased an Acer 5250-BZ853 last year, in October
(I remember because it was my birthday), and it's been working fine aside from
a
few minor mishaps. But then yesterday, it all wen to hell. I did a windows
update, and I have no idea of what happened but a few hours later, I restarted
it because it was acting up and that usually fixes it. The first time, I
panicked because when I came to the log in screen it said my password was wrong
-- as if while I was gone for a few minutes (giving my laptop time to load up,
because I had to take the dogs out), someone had changed it. Now, this isn't
possible. One, because no one knows my password. Two, my password has been the
same since the day I got it and put one on.

I began panicking and kept restarting it (maybe once or twice), and then it
worked for a bit though the desktop was ALL wrong. It then restarted on its
own,
and has ever since continually been just restarting over and over. I have
important files on there and when I Google'd it, someone suggested I try to
install Ubuntu so I can get my files off (someone else had the same problem),
and so I tried to get into safe mode -- but it won't even let me get that far
into, to where I can log in. It just restarts. I did the pressing F8 button and
disabled the restarting upon error, but it STILL restarts. It acts as if I am
about to log in, but then the blackness continues until it restarts all over
again.

I'm just at a loss. I'd really like to get my files off. My plan was that
apparently the update did something, so I'd use Ubuntu to get my files off and
then reformat it to factory settings. Now I can't even get as far as logging
in/installing Ubuntu!

Help, please?