A somewhat similar thing happened to me after a failed Windows 7 install some times ago, it was stuck on the first screen. That turned out to be a hard disk related problem: when I removed the disk and put it in an external usb enclosure, and format it on another computer, I could put it back and everything went back to normal.
I wouldn't recommend for you to format your hard disk right away, especially because you might have a system recovery partition on the disk. But if you're confident getting it out, you can try this: get it out, and try to go into bios. If it succeeds, set your boot order back to original, and put back the disk.
What model is the laptop? The user guide usually tells which keys are supposed to be pressed for different functions.