Please provide more details about these statements, "the computer wouldnt come back on", " i had to do a system restore", "it kept popping up to the enter safe mode screen", "reinstalling now to see if it happens again", and "Still a no go!"
Please indicate if there were any hardware changes made to the computer.
As the computer came from the factory with Windows XP MCE SP2, recovering the computer to a factory like state using the HP Recovery Discs or the HP Recovery partition should clear up any issue, Immediate after the recovery is done, you should download SP3 from HERE. After downloading SP3, install it and report back.
Please send KUDOS