XP crash-restart loop

[StickBoy]

A friend of mine has the following problem:

One day while using his computer (eMachines with XP Home), it froze and turned itself off.
Now when he starts it, it stops at what I call the Safe Mode menu, which gives various options for starting the computer. The problem is, no matter which option he chooses - Safe Mode, last known good configuration, Normal - they all seem to start Windows as usual, then it turns itself off and restarts, putting him back at the Safe Mode menu.
I checked at Microsoft.com and they advise running the System Restore tool ... but the computer will not remain stable even in Safe Mode with Prompt, so I don't know how to do that.
(To top things off, he seems to have lost his boot disk, though I'm not sure that would even help.)
Any ideas on how to at least get the thing started in whatever minimal mode possible to do some troubleshooting?

[allida77]

Is it possible that it may have a virus? Make sure it has all the latest patches. To stop the box from rebooting try :

shutdown /a

in the command line

[StickBoy]

The thing is, it reboots before you can do anything.
It looks like Windows starts, but before it finishes its startup routine, it kicks itself into reboot. There's no opportunity to type anything or do anything.
I have no experience with XP and have not had a chance to actually look at the problem (just heard about it over the phone).
I wonder if there is a way in XP to prevent certain things (or everything) from starting on boot. In 98, you use either F5 or F8 (I forget which one exactly).
And yes, it's possible there may be a virus, but which one is unknown.

[Roy Sinclair]

Pressing F8 during the boot will bring up the boot menu. Try using the LOGGED Boot option and then look at the log file to see what it's trying to load before it crashes. It may be some broken driver or failed hardware that's causing this and the code it's trying to run when it fails is what you need from this log to help you move forward.

[sage45]

Unfortunately, in this case, you cannot prevent XP from restarting...

What is most likely happening, is that there is a corrupt hive in the registry... This is causing the system to error out on boot up and restart (tis also the reason why you can't use safe mode)... Your friend would need to use his cd to repair his installation... If it is a restore cd (which it most likely is) this means a total reinstall of his entire system (as restore cd's do not carry the OS unpackaged)...

In the future to prevent this loop:

Right Click on 'My Computer'
Select Properties
Choose Advanced --> Settings in the 'Startup and Recovery' Section
In the 'System Failure' Section make sure that 'Automatically Restart' is unchecked...

Or you can edit the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl\AutoReboot=0
HTH,

-sage-

[StickBoy]

Thanks to everybody for your help.
We never did find the actual problem - my friend decided there was nothing worth salvaging on the computer and we simply restored the image (he found the disks). Then he spent the next three days downloading 41 files from Windows Update.
The next lesson here is: Image your system more often!
Anyway, thanks again.