Hp Laptop Log in screen won;t show

Hello,

A few hours ago my HP laptop started to not open things when i clicked them. Like, if i clicked on interent explorer, it would never pop up a window, same for the paint application, the clock, etc... so i shut it down. When i turned it back on, it goes to the windows loading screen like normal and finishes it like normal. But then the blue screen with the HP logo pops up, the one where i usually type in my password to log in, but the log in box won't show... its just the blue screen with Hp in the backround... and nothing ever comes up no matter how long... i've restarted it several times now and the same thing happens every time... what should i do?

PS: when i was shutting it down the first time, it said there were updates to do... but it didn;t actually seem to do them cause it shutdown like 10 seconds later as if there were no updates... i don;t know if that matters or not

thanks