Computer Problem (Not Mine)

[Maxon]

A friend is having issues getting his PC to work.  It turns on and gets to the login screen for XP, but then just suddenly restarts and keeps doing it.  Any ideas for what his problem may be?

[CaffeinePowered]

Past experience with problems like that is that it is usually bad memory, try running a mem test utility using a boot CD

[copulatingduck]

Memtest86 Boot disc - unzip, then burn the iso to a CD. Stick it in your drive, and it should be self-explanatory from there.

[HeK]

It's likely blue-screening and automatically rebooting before it can display an error.
See if you can get into safemode (with command prompt) and run a 'chkdsk /r'
Otherwise try a windows boot/install disk. Drop into a recovery console and use the same command.

[Fail Medic]

Video drivers don't load before you "log in", right? 

I was having a problem where during initial loading of systray crap, that's when I'd bluescreen.  It was hitching on a bad install of ATI Catalyst.

[Budr]

It was hitching on a bad install of ATI Catalyst.

In before Ain

[Maxon]

Well I'll see what he can do, but I don't know if he has access to another PC.  Don't actually live near him, but I'll try to get him to get that memtest utility.