XP Home lock up

From: Wes Sanders (WesSanders_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 10/27/04 

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 16:55:01 -0700

I am running a comp with XP Home, AMD 2400 (2 GHz), 512 mem, SpyBot, AdAware,
Gigabtye GA-7VA motherboard, DSL modem, ATI 9000 graphics.

My computer has been locking up the past three days approx. First time it
happened, I had left the comp connected to DSL for a few hours with no
surfing. I thought maybe the DSL provide DCHP had kicked me off and I needed
a new IP address. The keyboard/mouse was unresponsive, cursor was frozen, no
C-A-D would work, could not tell and did not think about, if the HD was
spinning (typical AMD processor is loud and heard that over anything else).
I hit reset and the computer made it up to the XP flag screen and then reset
itself. This happened a few times, so I ended up waiting a minute or so, hit
the power button and the computer started back up with no issues.

Last night same thing happened, so troubleshooting was same, but computer
would not start back up. Left it off overnight and tried again, same
outcome. Every time it will make it to the XP flag screen and then restart,
as if I had pressed the reset button.

I am able to restart in Safe mode and Safe with networking mode. Also able
to start in VGA mode, and it will get up to the log in screen. As soon as I
select the log in icon, it restarts again. Every start up is without errors,
only indication something is wrong is when it restarts again and again.

Tried XP restore back to date prior to initial problem, also restoring
Spybot and AdAware deletions, no luck. XP ran chkdsk for me with no errors.
Also ran Windows Mem Diagnostic, deleted temp files and cookies and am
running defrag now. Event log shows DCOM errors, but I think that is related
to the Safe mode startup. Also get some ‘Service manager’ error, but it MAY
be related to the Safe mode as well, not sure on that one.

Is there a surface scan option in XP similar to 98? Was wondering if I
might have a bad sector on the HD with a vital .dll file. Also, is there an
option to run the boot sequence line by line so that I can see where the
error is taking place or what is tripping up the system? I tried the Debug
mode of the start up but that did not work, same reset outcome after the XP
flag screen.

Ideas? Thanks for the help.