Repair in safe mode 10.5.8

Hello, so I'm having some issues;
My MacBook Pro 17" dual core 2.3 w/4gb ram (A1212) running 10.5.8 started acting up.
I started getting 2" gray boxes and copying program pages when the window would close or move.
I assumed that my graphics card gave out; because that seems to be the problem with these machines, and I'm a video editor and put a lot of stress on my "old girl"... cs4 suite, maya unlimited, zbrush, sometimes rendering all night. And of course I did not have Time Machine on because i needed to optemise ram, memory, processor speed...ect....
For about a week I would just restart the Macbook and start over.
Then it stopped starting all together. I would get the start up apple screen, then the cycle apple, then blue. It stayed blue for half an hour before i gave up
I tried holding the start button until it made that horrible noise, resetted the pram, smc.. nothing
Then as my last resort, I looked into starting up in "safe mode."
I pushed power and held down select until the cycle apple came on and released; then after about a minute it went blue, then after about 5 minutes it started up in safe mode!
There are no gray boxes, just some ghosting that looks like processing script under the cursor.
questions-
1) So being that its starting up, can I assume its not the graphics card?
2) What do I do from here to repair computer so I can operate normal again?
3) Will I be able to repair without any OS disks?
4) If I take it into apple, can they save my programs?
...I don't really care about the adobe programs, but maya took a lot of effort to get on my mac(I lost my registration numbers), and I don't have the disks for zbrush and some other programs(I don't have any of the disks anymore, being that it's been almost 6 years)
Thank you for your help!
-ry

Usually the data on a HDD can be retrieved. Take it out of the MBP, install it in an enclosure and connect it to another Mac and you should be able to see all of your data unless the HDD is also part of your problems.
I suggest that you take your MBP to an Apple store and get a diagnosis of what hardware problems exist and the costs involved in repairing them. The diagnosis will be free, any repairs will not.
Ciao.

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Hi jim1287,po
Check for the latest updates. Installing latest updates should resolve this problem.
Also, try to ran disk repair using safe mode in Mac, for instructions please visit: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14204
Try enabling root user profile on mac and try to check. OS X Mavericks: Enable and disable the root user
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I'm simply all out of ideas on what to do - my best guess is the problem is not specifically hard-drive related since all the 'normal' fixes just won't work.
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http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1054895
Read bottom set of posts at http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-51350.html
Message was edited by: Limnos

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HELP! Safe mode or repair?

I created a new folder within Project Manager. I named it
(administration) and clicked off of it and RH7 froze. It will now
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What you seem to be describing is how things might behave and
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Several take home messages here:
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Repair in safe mode 10.5.8

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