my computer has issues

I don't know much about computers but Ill try to explain. I have a Dell Studio laptop. Im sure there are lots of studios but I don't know this specific one. It has a label that says "Intel Core 2 duo" if that helps. I recently got one of those virus's thats the FBI thing where it basically says you have been doing illegal stuff and expect you to pay money. I was able to go into safe mode because the virus doesn't let you get into your stuff, i went into safe mode and did the advanced recovery option where you start your computer from an earlier save point. This fixed the issue. A week later it happened again, so I attempted the same methods but now this isn't working. The computer constantly boots to start up repair. I try to hit f8 to go into safe mode but it doesn't let me do that. It also has an f2 and f12 option but they don't get you to any recovery or safe mode options. The start up repair mode does let you look at the recovery options after it runs the test thing. I can't seem to skip past all of this to the long in part or anything. There is the same recovery option to choose an earlier date but for some reason it says there aren't any dates. What can i do? This is a vista computer. I couldn't tell you if it was 32 or 64. The computer is rather old and Id like to avoid reloading vista onto the computer because I like to do macromedia flash 8 things and from my past expieence in reloading a operating system, you have to reload macromedia and you can't open any of the files from the older operating system for some reason.

I've added the "problems detail" that the start up repair shows.

Problem Event Name: Startup repair offline
problem signature 1: 6.1.7600.16385
problem signature 2: 6.1.7600.16385
problem signature 3:unknown
problem signature 4:28
problem signature 5:autofailover
problem signature 6: 1
problem signature 7:missing os loader
os version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
locale id: 1033

Not sure if that will help anything.