What happens when you choose normal mode from those startup options?

If you are still coming back to the same options then, notice whether you get any message like "we apologize for  the inconvenience but windows did not start successfully, a recent hardware or software change might have caused this..........." while the computer is at the startup options where it displays the normal, safe, safemode with netwoking,etc.

Just notice this message if you are getting at the startup options. I am pretty sure you will be having this message there. See if you are able to login to the safemode desktop. If you can, perform a system restore to an earlier date on which you did not have this problem. That will resolve the issue.

If not then the only option left will be to go for repair of the XP or complete resinstallation.

If you want to know how to perform system restore just reply to this message.

I was looking through the forum and came to your response about  XP will not boot........

For  the past month my computer has come up with  "we apologize for  the inconvenience but windows did not start successfully, a recent hardware or software change might have caused this "  

every time we power up the computer.  It is taking more and more attempts to start up.  I have tried all the options and eventually one will work.  System restore doesn't go back far enough to make this go away.

Do I need to completely reinstall XP?  I started out with 98SE and upgraded a year ago to XP and had no problems until recently.  I tried to do a repair today with my XP cd and since I have  downloaded SP2 it says that my OS is newer than the one on disk and it won't work

First start your computer, goto the BIOS and reset factory defaults, save the changes and exit.

Shutdown the computer, unplug all the devices except the monitor from the CPU.

Now start your computer and see if it works. if it works, plug back each device one by one by restarting everytime. By doing this you can come to know the device that is causing the problem.

If it does not work, then go for complete reinstallation as nothing else can be done.