New
#11
Thanks to everyone who replied. The matter was rather urgent and I wasn't able to fix the problem myself so I handed my laptop over to the technician employed by the university department in which I work. He managed to get the computer up and running, but in the end he had to save all my files, eliminate a large number of programs I'd installed, and do a clean install of Windows 10 (which is now version 1709!!).
He removed my version of Microsoft Office 2010 and installed Office 2016, but I hadn't previously saved contacts and calendar as .pst files, so I have lost of that. Still, much better than losing all of my documents.