After telling that bit of information, now on to the problem. About a week and a half ago my laptop started freezing up, even when I wasn’t running very many programs. To correct the problem of it freezing up, I did an emergency shutdown by holding down the power button each time. Sometines, the laptop wouldn’t boot all the way because it was freezing up, so naively (I suspect) I did an emergency shutdown. When I restarted my computer, it ran Startup Repair and ran fine until I shut it down or left it idle.

It was like this for the first couple of days that it was freezing up, but then there was a new twist to the freezing. The machine would “tile” a section of the screen and act just as if it were frozen. As soon as I got my computer back, I contacted an HP online technician and talked to them about the issue. The technician sent me a list of steps to help correct it (among which were doing a sfc utility scan and a resetting and updating of the BIOS) which I did.

However, the problem persisted to the point where it did the “funny” freeze up and when I tried to restart the machine, it wouldn’t boot all the way, sometimes not even fulling loading Startup Repair. After an hour of (unsuccessfully) trying this, I contacted another HP online technician. We tried to work the problem out, but the machine was being stubborn and not going to the same phase of booting with each time. Finally, it got to the point where the screen would be a black, light up (but not go to the HP logo so I could try booting it in safe mode) or just not turning on at all but the LEDs were. We did a power drain, and then we tried running it just off the AC adapter (no battery), but then just the LEDs would turn on and would make the sound like it wanted to boot up but the screen doesn’t light up. It is consistent. The problem completely confused the technician as well.

As a result, HP offered a free one time mailin repair even though the computer is no longer under warranty. When I got the shipping crate with the shipping instructions today, the very first instruction was to make sure the files, information, and software were backed up in case they had to do a complete wipe of the hard drive and reinstallation of the OS. And, like a naive idiot, I hadn’t thought to back up the files (most specifically, the music and videos I have bought on iTunes) before the I’m-not-gonna-even-get-to-the-point-where-you-can-boot-me-in-safe-mode problem, and I admit I definitely haven’t been backing up the files as I should have been. The problem is, I don’t know how to get them off the hard drive and to a backed up state (I’m guessing maybe an external hard drive?) when I can’t boot the machine up. I would prefer to not to go a professional tech for this because of the money, but if I must then I must.

So, the two questions that I really want answered are as follows:
(1) What is your opinion on what is causing the issue?
(2) Could you please explain, in somewhat beginner’s detail, how to either back up or transfer the files on my hard drive to another storage source such as maybe a removable hard drive?

Thank you for your time.