could you verify that the event log service was running??
since you can see the drive, what user are you logging in with??
open with the administrator not any other user and see if this lets you open the event viewer
how long does the window hang when you try to boot to safe mode??
and does it do this for all the safe mode entries, such as, safe mode with networking and safe mode with command prompt??
if you can get it to open with safe mode with command prompt see what happens when you type in explorer.exe
to clarify, you can see the drive, can you see your documents and download them to a flash drive?? as you might have to reinstall the os.