XP Home won't boot

I never shut my computer down so when I got up this morning there was a message that MS updates had been installed and I needed to restart the computer. When I rebooted a message came up saying "Starting Windows 98" and it locked up there. Windows 98 has never been on this machine. I have to boot from the setup disk. Malwarebytes, AVG, CCleaner, and System Restore to three days ago hasn't changed the situation. After the second time I tried to boot from the installation disk, it wouldn't boot, only install a full version. I now have a clean hard drive but every time I try to reboot it only re-installs XP. I'm no novice but I'm completely stymied on this one.

 

You could uninstall all the updates and then go to Microsoft Update and reinstall them yourself. I would call Microsoft first, however. This sounds like a blunder...

 

I never could get to ad remove to do that and now there is nothing left on the hard drive, it has been formatted and have tried to reinstall XP several times. It will install but when I try re-reinstall any programs it tries to reboot and the "98" thing comes back up and I can't boot.

 

Are you really sure you have used the right CD? Can you restore to factory settings?

 

It's the CD that came with the computer.

 

Yes, I tried to restore to factory settings, didn't seem to make any difference.

 

Then the error is not related to your Windows OS? Check your vendors site for drivers and other updates related to your particular PC model.

I hate to say this: could this be a hardware error?

 

I don't know how, but it seems to have corrected itself.
Thanks for all the input.

 

Just thought I might say ... whenever repairing a computer, always try NOT to use your original CD/DVD unless it is an official MS Windows disk. Preloaded versions of Windows are always fraught with problems and extra programs ... try to use a fresh clean install of original, genuine MS Windows whenever you can.