Ok, i will start at the begging. The night prior to this problem, there was nothing wrong with computer, everything was operating NORMALLY. I shut down the computer for the night and went to bed. The next MORNING, i hit the power button its starts to boot like normal, then goes to the screen with prompts to "start windows normally", "start with last known good configuration", or "start in safe mode" with various OPTIONS. No matter which option i choose windows starts to load then the computer restarts. It then shows me a blue screen with hp and Intel with prompts to go to; "boot menu", "setup", and "system recovery". I have tried the system recovery and i hear the 2 beeps but it doesn't help the boot problem. I have tried restoring my BIOS settings to their defaults, but nothing. It just repeats restarting and cycling through those screens.

The most recent software i added would have been about a month ago and the computer behaved normally up to this morning.

Here's my specs:
RAM: 512mb, Hard drive: 250gb, OS: Windows XP

any help would be much appreciated, thank you.I would say you've had a hardware failure. It's difficult to say what though. The way to find out is to test each piece of hardware individually - do you have a second PC with which you can do some testing?I can probably get ahold of one for testing. but what would be the best way to go about testing each piece and what all should i test?

thanks for the helpI would say its your hard drive. The HD is like the brain of the computer. If the brain doesnt work right, then the body doesn't (see what I MEAN?) Your best bet is to clear the hard drive and reinstall everything. Most likely some important system file has bee deleated and you need to get it back. If you can try to save all of your important documents on a flash drive, but it sounds like you can't...This will make your life real easy.
Downlead the UBCD (Ultamate Boot CD).
It is an ISO file so bur it to a disk on another computer and boot to it. run all the cheks that are on the disk that wiull check all your hardware.

There is also a possiblility that your boot record became corupt.

Do you have a HP? (I think you said you did), also how old, and what disks if any came with it do you have. i.e.- re-install CD, or full XP CD.