computer lock up

My computer locked up last night (typing this from work!) out of the blue my mouse stopped moving. Rebooted the computer, came up but the monitor did not and it came up with a blue box that said "check monitor settings". Rebooted again many times, one time I got the screen back up but it locked up again within minutes, one time my mouse arrow changed to garbled grafics and locked. Booted in safe mode and the system seems to stay up although my screen geometry is wrong. Is there a way to boot in safe mode and then just load one program or driver at a time? I have to figure out what is locking up the system. I am hoping it isnt my hard drive crashing or my video grafics card going away, everything is only a year old. Any ideas or need more info?