Restore of Compaq

Hello,
I have a Compaq that had the hard drive replaced. This was about 4 years ago. We dusted it off and got it up and running. Started doing high priority updates. One went wrong and so we did a system restore. I went in and started doing just the high priority ones. There were 23 last night. Once it was done, I went to restart the computer and this is what happens. Compaq screen...flashes...Windows XP...flashes...restart over and over again. I can get the F8 screen and tried to do the Last Know Good Configuration but had the same result. Please help about ready to throw it!!!