Windows 7: pc reboots right when windows is about to start

let me start out by saying what happened. i was playing age of empires against my brother and out of nowhere my laptop froze completely! i tried ctrl alt del nothing mouse wouldnt move nothing soo i was like weird ohh well imma just shut it off. held the power button on my laptop shut it off. when i went to turn it back on it was loading windows liek normal but right when the mouse pointer usualy pops up it restarts and says vaio again and keeps going it over and over regardless of it being in safe mode or not. i tried to do a start up repair and also it said it couldnt do it. im pretty much stuck all i really want is my info out of my hd i wouldnt mind much reformatting it. and i was wondering if there was like a live cd thats windows 7 compatible i have a sony vaio with 6gb ram and 500 gb hard drive. any helo would be greatly appreciated. thanks.

Hello,

I recommend that you start out with some hardware tests. The 2 most likely components in my opinion are RAM and hard drive.

To test RAM, see this guide: RAM - Test with Memtest86+

To test the hard drive, use the DOS version of SeaTools.

What do you want from a Live CD? The Windows installation DVD works great, if you need to get into a command prompt. If you don't have one, you can create a system repair disc. See this tutorial: System Repair Disc - Create