When I start it seems like it's starting up then flashes up a message which I don't get a chance to see then just keeps trying to restart and will keep doing this . I can get into Reboot menus but nothing else, would like to save my photos and then Replace the bloody thing! any ideas?
Have you tried F8 at the start. You can take the drive out if you aren't going to use it again and get someone to get the stuff. Failing that get a Linux Live cd which will start from the cd the let you get your files
its coming up with- image apphelp.d11 is possibly corrupt the header check sum does not match the computed check sum, anyone know what the hell that means?
It means the apphelp.dll file is corrupt. Probably the easiest way for a non techie to fix this is to boot from the O/S CD-ROM and choose the system repair option.