XP just started blue screening

[jokes54321]

We have a reservation room full of Dell computers running XP Pro SP1. The
machines are locked down with Group Policies and nothing has been installed
in months. Yesterday two of them started blue screening during bootup. They
even blue screen when trying to boot in safe mode. The last good
configuration even blue screens. Today, my New York office called me and
they have an XP Pro computer doing the same thing. The blue screen flashes
by so fast we can't read what it says.

Any thoughts?

Denny

 

[Jack E. Frost]

What does Dell say?


We have a reservation room full of Dell computers running XP Pro SP1. The
machines are locked down with Group Policies and nothing has been installed
in months. Yesterday two of them started blue screening during bootup. They
even blue screen when trying to boot in safe mode. The last good
configuration even blue screens. Today, my New York office called me and
they have an XP Pro computer doing the same thing. The blue screen flashes
by so fast we can't read what it says.

Any thoughts?

Denny

 

[R. McCarty]

A BSOD contains useful information to decipher the error.
A BSOD will also be logged in the System Event log. Turning off
Automatic Reboot on System Errors is a simple one-click operation.
Yesterday was Microsoft's monthly update release, did your systems
automatically receive this patch?

3 machines out of X, exhibiting a common symptom means that
something changed. If they are Dell's do they have Dell's support
software running?, you could have received an update from them
that is at the root of the problem.

 

[jokes54321]

Thanks everyone for your replies. Turns out the Maxtor drives in both Dell
units failed, according to the Maxtor Powerblast test software. I am waiting
for the New York computer to get here to see what it's problem is.

On a side note, how does one disable automatic reboot if they can't get into
the OS to begin with?