Won't start, blue flickering screen

I searched through some of the other posts for MacBooks not starting and only found 1 relating to my situation, and he was using an older OS. I am not sure if this is a software issue, but since it won't start up, I figured it was hardware related.

The problem started last night, I used my macbook(OS X 10.5, leopard) during the day with no problems or any weirdness, but later on when I went to watch a movie, the entire computer froze, after waiting for a while, I just held down the power button to shut down.

I turned on the machince and it powered up to the grey screen with the apple and the dial was spinning, it stayed there for a few minutes (longer than normal, but while in the grey screen I was able to remove the DVD) then flicked to a blue screen where the dial appeared again, I waited and the screen flicked to another blue screen where I could move the arrow mouse around and there was a small square in the upper left hand corner, then flicked right back to the blue screen with the spinning dial. It continued to flick between these 2 blue screens.

The battery is fully charged and I have tried powering down again, removing the battery, resetting the PRAM, I cannot start up in safe mode-it will just send me to the flickering blue screens, I am at work right now and I do not have my utility discs.

Has anyone had this problem before? I am more worried about losing all my stuff since I haven't backed anything up (yeah I know), I am still under warrenty and have an appt with the Apple store already, I am wondering if anyone could give me an idea on what's going on? I apologize if this has been addressed already, I couldn't find anything through searches.

Thanks

Hi

I am experiencing the same problem on snow leopard although I was using an external monitor when I powered down. Did you ever get a resolution? My mac is out of warranty

Which year is your model from? If it was from 2007-2008, the warranty on your GPU was extended to 3 years, even though the computer itself might be 1 year. I had similar problems with mine, I went through 3 MBPs all having similar GPU problems, and this warranty took care of them all. So take it to your local Apple store, and see what they say.

I'm having this problem as well, with a Mac Pro. I believe it's trying to login but failing, and is now stuck in this perpetual cycle. I've run into similar problems in the past, which were usually the result of an interrupted/failed update. Is there any way to check the update log to find out what might have gone wrong?