Sony Vaio notebook, reboots whenever an executable file is run.

From: Ron (rekalil_at_wisc.edu)
Date: 02/01/04 

Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2004 11:30:46 -0800

I own a Sony Vaio PCG-F590K notebook that I purchased about
four years ago. The notebook is running Windows 2000,
Service Pack 4, and has performed without any major
problems until recently.
About six months ago, the notebook began to reboot at
apparently random intervals just before the normal boot
procedure ended, as the desktop was being displayed. Check
disc then would be launched, no problems would be found,
and the boot procedure would go to completion. On average
these spurious rebootings would occur about 5-10%% of the
time.
And then something new happened. When attempting to read
commercial CDROMs with autorun files from any source, a
reboot was triggered almost immediately. The situation then
deteriorated during the past week to the point where it is
now impossible to run almost all executable files,
including Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 which I tried
unsuccessfully to reinstall or a BIOS update file from Sony
Curiously, the spurious rebooting problem does not
currently occur when loading WORD, EXCEL or POWERPOINT, but
I am concernd that it soon will.
While I could perhaps solve this problem by reinstalling
Windows 2000, I consisder this to be a solution of last resort.
My suspicion is that there is a file or files that almost
all executable programs use, except the Microsoft programs
mentioned above, and that this file or set of files has
become corrupted. If so, then I should be able to copy
clean files into the correct folder and hopefully fix the
rebooting problem. However, if such files exist, I don't
know how to identify them.
Any advice/help will be most gratefully appreciated.
Sincerely,
Ron