Computer Help Needed...

Rob, Del is right on the video being the problem.
Any time a screen is scrambled it's the video hardware itself.
Video software can mess with your screen but double images is a hardware failure, and it's pretty common on those.
What happens is the solder joints come loose on the motherboard and disrupt the images.
After this happens, sometimes they make the connection and sometimes they dont make connection at all.
There is a trick using a heat gun to re melt the solder joints so they make contact but it's pretty involved and risky. (I personally wouldn't try it unless the machine was completely unusable already and it was REALLY important so that it might be worth it)

What Del was talking about when he said what he did about another screen is that a lot of older laptops have a connector on the side or back of the machinr that a desktop style monitor will connect to.
Then to activate the outside video you would press the Fn key and the key that has the little blue screen (the 4 key I think) so you would be pressing Fn and then 4 while holding the Fn key down.
Problem is that if it's the connections I was mentioning it won't help, as the other screen will also have the same problem.

That cable Del mentioned is a nice tool for recovering data from a hard drive (I have one) and it is very handy, but in your case I would recommend you try and come up with a USB stick and copy your important files to it.
Otherwise most laptops have at least a CD burner in them and you can burn the files to CDR disks by right clicking them and "Send To" your CDR drive.
Windows will start telling you that you have files waiting to be written and lead you right through it.
Iv'e seen lots of laptops die from that exact problem.
Let me know if you need help with it, or better explanations.

BTW, Windows freaks if it looses connection for the video output and that is where the "Serious Error" thing came from.