My Laptop, an expensive model, started like that and finally hung up. The bug report (safe mode) indicated a graphics problem. I googled and got some frightening results. It seems that with some, not all, laptops, using Nvidea graphics, have had the same problem. I am not frightening you, but it seems that the last driver update altered a few settings, which, one could say, oveclocked the card, and cooked it. The drivers cannot be backdated, as the card is now literally broken. I am running the laptop in the basic generic VGA mode, which is not bad but with obvious limitations.
My IT son tells me that it is possible to put the card in the oven for a while and it will work again - frighteneing thought!!!!
So I now have a £1600 XP...