Rebooting every time during startup

Any advice appreciated on this one!

A work colleague has brought his PC in for me to investigate a prob he has.
Basically it reboots itselfs *every* time during startup.

SYSTEM:
Bespoke build (from a local shop)
ASRock mobo (onboard sound/video/NIC)
Pentium-D 2.80GHz
512mb RAM
2 x HDD
1 x CD-RW
Windows XP Home

DETAILS:
- WinXP appears to reach a file labelled kmxstart.sys then reboots.
- Same happens if I try to boot into Safe Mode
- Same happens if I select 'boot from last known good configuration'.

If I log into Recovery Console from a WinXP CD, it shows the two hard drives
(WinXP sitting on drive D: oddly, but system also definitely booting from
this drive too).

CHKDSK /p on both drives found problems and fixed them. But reboot yielded
exactly the same problem.

I am currently installing XP onto a spare HDD I have installed into the box,
for testing the system, and it's been on a good hour now and no reboots or
anything odd happening, so I currently think it's something to do with a
corrupt file on the WinXP drive.

Ideally I need to see an event log for the boot-up process but I'm not sure
if this is possible?

Or can anyone recommend the best way of rebuilding this WinXP installation
without jeopardizing/deleting the 3 users accounts currently on the drives
(drive D: in particular).

Thanks for any advice in advance.

EJ

Is there a Stop Error Report?

Disable automatic restart on system failure. This should help by
allowing time to write down the STOP code properly. Right click on
the My Computer icon on the Desktop and select Properties, Advanced,
Start-Up and Recovery, System Failure and uncheck box before
Automatically Restart.

Do not re-enable automatic restart on system failure even after you have
solved the problem as it's better disabled. Check for variants of the
Stop Error message.

An alternative is to keep pressing the F8 key during Start-Up and select
option - Disable automatic restart on system failure.

If you are using a wireless keyboard and the F8 key does not work
substitute a wired keyboard and mouse for this exercise only.


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

EJ wrote:
> Any advice appreciated on this one!
>
> A work colleague has brought his PC in for me to investigate a prob
> he has. Basically it reboots itselfs *every* time during startup.
>
> SYSTEM:
> Bespoke build (from a local shop)
> ASRock mobo (onboard sound/video/NIC)
> Pentium-D 2.80GHz
> 512mb RAM
> 2 x HDD
> 1 x CD-RW
> Windows XP Home
>
> DETAILS:
> - WinXP appears to reach a file labelled kmxstart.sys then reboots.
> - Same happens if I try to boot into Safe Mode
> - Same happens if I select 'boot from last known good configuration'.
>
> If I log into Recovery Console from a WinXP CD, it shows the two hard
> drives (WinXP sitting on drive D: oddly, but system also definitely
> booting from this drive too).
>
> CHKDSK /p on both drives found problems and fixed them. But reboot
> yielded exactly the same problem.
>
> I am currently installing XP onto a spare HDD I have installed into
> the box, for testing the system, and it's been on a good hour now and
> no reboots or anything odd happening, so I currently think it's
> something to do with a corrupt file on the WinXP drive.
>
> Ideally I need to see an event log for the boot-up process but I'm
> not sure if this is possible?
>
> Or can anyone recommend the best way of rebuilding this WinXP
> installation without jeopardizing/deleting the 3 users accounts
> currently on the drives (drive D: in particular).
>
> Thanks for any advice in advance.