Mysterious re-boot issue

[WhoKnows]

I've got a strange problem. Once in a while, I'll find this old, (~3-
4yrs), just running a reboot loop. I never have seen what causes it,
but the effect is that the boot drive seems to have been corrupted. The
symptoms are that:

1) Bios detects all drives and seems happy
starts windows boot loader. (get the vertical lines at the bottom of
screen)
2) get the XP splash screen
3) them BOOM a blue screen that flashes for a second and then the reboot
loop again.

The blue screen is too fast to get any indication of the problem. And
there is no entry in the event log to indicate any issue that caused
this it prior to the reboot. I have to restore the disk to get it to
boot. I'm thinking it's a driver file or some such getting jazzed. How
can I find out???

Is there some way to log the boot process as in W98SE?? I'm stumped

I'm running XP pro
Abit KT7A-RAID, w/latest bios
Athlon Tbrd 900
384 MB Crucial RAM
120GB WD ATA drive on regular controller
40GB IBM drive on the highpoint controller
ASUS V7700 deluxe vid card, (Gforce2 GTS based)
Soundblaster live


Thanks for all replies

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

Disable the "autorestart on system failure" behavior. This is a system
default. Go to the Control Panel/System/Advanced tab, click on startup and
recovery settings. Uncheck this option under system failure. Now when it
happens, the system should stop at the blue screen where you can read it to
figure out what's going on.

As it is random, I would suspect a hardware fault, possibly due to aging or
overheating, or a combination thereof.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org