Computer troubles

A friend's laptop was left in a car yesterday and now doesn't work. It boots, allows you to type in the password then hangs indefinitely without the desktop loading. 18 hours after being brought in out of the cold and this hasn't changed (so it doesn't seem to be purely a case of the components still being cold). The control panel is accessible and shows CPU and memory activity, processes show all the expected things, but the desktop itself doesn't load and no programs are listed as running.

I was able to boot it in safe mode and it ran normally. After that the results of Google searches it was recommended that I disable power-saving in case that was throttling the CPU. This seems to have made no difference. Power-saving setting has been restored now.

The model is a Samsung NC10 netbook. I'm now at the edge of my experience – if anyone else can help, please comment below, tweet @AlciusyStargaze – she's sat at my computer right now and will respond as soon as she sees messages.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

Follow-up: The laptop is now fixed. Many thanks to @abaddon879 for his assistance.