I installed Lion but now my Macbook won't go past the start-up screen. Help!

I installed Mac OS X Lion today and it downloaded and installed fine but when it restarted it went to the white start up screen with the grey apple logo and the wheel kept going around for two hours. I held the power button and my macbook went off so I pushed it again and it went on, again staying at the start up screen for half an hour. I restarted it again and held the option button to boot to recovery. I then repaired the permissions and the disk drive and then reinstalled Mac OS X Lion. This time the installation took around 4 hours to complete and then restarted. It again went to the white start up screen and the grey wheel has now been going around for the last hour! What can I do? I haven't backed up my files and would still like to keep them. Thanks.

Hey Lyssa
I don't have a back up but I'm not to worried about that as it's my traveling computer and I only use it for the web and some word processing.
I don't have the disks with me right now as I'm away from home. I'm not sure what I had updated, I think there was a lot because I hadn't don't it in a long time.
If I can start it in safe mode what should I do?
Thanks.
Bevan

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