1005HA-PU17 won't boot.

I got a new 1005HA-PU17 for Christmas, and have been using it sparingly since then. Tonight, while studying at school, I had Chrome open to Gmail, and I had allowed the system to idle long enough to dim the LCD. When I touched the track pad to wake it up, it blue screened and tried to reboot, only to get stuck indefinitely on the Windows loading screen (with the moving green bar). I have tried to restart it since then, and it gets to the same point, except now the bar moves across the screen one time and then the computer hangs up and progresses no further, occasionally making a faint clicking sound.

I have tried booting in safe mode twice. It loads several drivers, then hangs up and stops after loading CLASSPNP.sys.
I have tried booting to last known good configuration. It does the same thing as it did before (stopping after the Windows loading screen appears).
I called Asus Tech Support and after talking to me for ~4 minutes told me that I probably had a virus or spyware that was causing this issue, and that I had to perform a system restore. Based on the fact that I've hardly used this computer for web browsing other than school things, and on my own knowledge and experience using a computer, I find this to be extremely unlikely. It has also never suffered a hard fall or knock of any kind, or been asked to do any sort of computational heavy lifting. My guess is that I was shipped a defective model. I told the tech support guy that I needed to back up my files, because I have a week's worth of notes on the system (and that's pretty much irreplaceable in med school), and he told me that there are ways to do this "but I can't tell you them."

I've looked around on Google and can't find anything. I would really appreciate any help, and would like to say that I'd especially appreciate your timely reply because as I said, I am a med student and I need my computer to take notes on and study with. I won't make the mistake of going a day or two without backing up this computer again. I especially would like information regarding backing up the data from a system that won't boot at all (I do have an external HD, if that helps. No external CD drive, though).

Thanks very much for your help.

 

Maybe try this if you have another computer:
Download ubuntu. Also download unetbootin.
Use unetbootin to make a bootable usb with ubuntu on it.
Then boot into ubuntu from the USB. Try to get access to your files with ubuntu.

BTW, what type of drive does your netbook have (SSD or HDD)?