windowsXP in deep trouble -- virus?

[j...@command-post.com]

Hello. My Windows XP desktop is in deep trouble. When i boot in safe mode, I get a black "SAFE MODE" windows screen that shows no programs and no drives.

This all started yesterday when I was searching images in google images. Everything was going fine, then I clicked on a particular image and suddenly all my programs shut down. Windows was still operating but wordperfect and my seamonkey simply turned off. Then I got a message screen saying I had a harddrive error and said I needed to scan for errors. This sounded fishy to me so I rebooted. WIndows would cycle then through a bootup sequence but at the end just came up with a black screen. The only message box at the bottom on an otherwise black screen was I had files that needed to be written to CD. (Probably true, as many days ago I had attempted to write a CD but never completed it.)

I tried again with warm boot, cold boot. No go.

I tried running HDD Regenerator, booting from an external CD. It scanned the entire 300 gig boot drive for over 16 hours and found NO errors. That seems rather amazing.

Now I just tried booting into safe mode and my heart sank as I see I am in safe mode but the SAFE MODE screen is completely black and the windows MENU at the bottom left is there, but it is absolutely empty. I have never seen such a desolate Windows SAFE MODE screen. Not even a background of any kind. I wanted to install malwarebytes but  I think it may be too late. Is this a virus or not?

Luckily I backed up some of my most critical data to another drive just hours before this happened. Also somewhere I know I have a boot clone but it's a fairly old one, perhaps 1-2 years old. Perhaps I should take just the bad boot drive in for diagnosis to a shop and not the whole computer. Any opinions on my problem?

thx

John