I have a 3700 laptop; I have been using it regularly since 2005. It has been working well until this afternoon - when I turn it on, I get a black screen the starts with "we apologize for any inconvenience but Windows did not start correctly..." and it goes through a loop of opening windows - but will not succeed and not get out of this loop and open up Windows with any of the options offered. There was also a quick flash of a blue screen with white writing (and I cannot see what is written there), and also a few crackling noises. Any help will be appreicated! Help I need my laptop!

If the crackling noise comes from the place where you plug in the power cord, try wiggling it and see if it moves too much or it's firmly attached. It may be a problem of a detached power socket, in which case you'll need to resolder the power plug on the motherboard.
If the crackling noise sounds like a metal-on-metal clicks and comes from the hard drive area, then you're hearing "the click of death" which means your hard drive is about to die. In this case, get a 2.5 inch IDE/ATA hard drive USB enclosure, mount the hard drive in the enclosure and copy the data onto a good hard drive.
If the crackling noise is more like hissing high pitch noise and comes from the center of the laptop or close to where the vents are, then you may be looking at a motherboard failure, more specifically a poor contact of the FSB chip. This can cause all sorts of issues, and your description might just be one of them. Take a look at this post for troubleshooting and repairing a motherboard with a bad FSB chip.

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