keeps rebooting with blue screen for a split second

my kids computer starts up and shows error mssge " warning:system boot fail" " your system last boot fail or post interupted .please enter setup to load default and reboot again" so I go into setup press f5 to load setup defaults and save and exit and then starts loading ,shows a choice of safe modes , it doesn't matter which one I choose it then shows a bunch of text for about 3 seconds, the text generally mentions partitions and sys32 drivers, and then shows a blue screen for a split second, too fast to read anything and then reboots and go's thru the whole thing again, the computer is only 1 year old, intel celeron 2 ghz, 2 gb ram and 160gb hard drive and the os is xp home, I usually keep a close watch on what the kids do on the computer and we use macafee antivirus. I'm not a computer geek but I can follow instructions, hope someone can help me.

 

What model?

I've had a Lenovo that after 'restoring defaults' per their tech support caused a similar issue, which they couldn't figure out. I found out that changing BIOS defaults changed a SATA option that pooched the whole deal. So restoring defaults may have further exasperated the issue.

Also you may need this:
http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives...-windows-system-using-offline-system-restore/

To recover a past registry or restore point.

 

thanks for the replys, couldn't even get to the start screen anyway, but doesn't matter cause I fixed computer, don't know how, I just kept on fiddling around in the bios and trying different things and then it booted up so while it was up I ran a virus scan which didn't pick anything up and defragged the hard drive and looked in the loaded programs and deleted a few I didn't like the look of(you know kids, they will download eveything if you let em) any way I closed the computer down and rebooted and have had no problems since, so its a mystery to me