Macbook Pro white screen

After using my 13 inch Macbook Pro last night I shut it off and when I turned it on this morning it shows a white screen with a beachball looking thing that is white also. Nothing I have tried has made it start up. Nothing could have happened to it while I was sleeping. Any help or suggestions. I am running Mountain Lion and my 13 inch Mac book Pro is 1 1/2 years old

Try this:

Reboot your MBP while holding down the command and r keys at the same time as soon as you hear the boot sound. That should boot the machine into the recovery partition. From the recovery partition, enter Disk Utility and verify the hard drive. Post back results.

Thank you So much chscag
for answering me. When I did what you suggested I thought I had it fixed. I could just tell something was happening BUT my screen remained white but there was a big padlock on it. Never ever seen this on a computer before. There was a slot underneath the lock that I thought was for my password but my cursor was unable to work on that slot. HELP!!!

It sounds like your 13" MBP has a firmware password assigned to it - based on your description. Did you recently install security or recovery software that requires the use of such a password?