Windows PC help
 

My friend just called and said his computer keeps rebooting before he can get in and do anything on it. Even in safe mode. Anyone know how to stop this?

Does it keep rebooting before it gets into windows, or after? If it's before, sounds like his version of XP got fucked up (maybe pirated, maybe not). He'll have to reinstall windows most likely.

It's either a virus.

or

His system's overheating.

Too late to edit my first post, seems like he's able to get into the GUI at least (you said he got into safe mode). If he can actually get into the GUI for a couple of secs than it's not windows causing it. Usually if it's a fucked up component in the OS it'll reboot BEFORE you get any GUI loaded. It could be a number of hardware problems causing the problem, or as barefootsies said a virus. Hardware problems, it could be a PSU issue, ram issue, or a motherboard issue. Easiest way to test to see if it's a virus vs. hardware is if you have a spare HD put it in the computer and reinstall a OS on it, and try to boot it up. If it's stable, then it probably was a virus. If it's not stable then it's a faulty component and you may have to test the computer one component at a time.

Is he getting a flash of a blue screen before it reboots? If so, that is an error msg. Have him press f8 until he gets the boot menu options and then have it so it halts on errors so you can tell what the error msg is. Just a thought

It's happening before he can even login and he thinks lightning struck their building so it's probably gonna be hardware problem.

He did try safe mode and last known good config but it still does the same thing.

If lightning struck, then yeap, it's pretty much 100% guaranteed hardware. The whole computer could be damaged but most likely damaged components are Ram or Power Supply. If he has access to another computer he can easily test the ram. He needs to download a program called Memtest86 (Available at http://www.memtest86.com) to either a floppy disk or a CD-rom, then reboot computer, let Memtest86 run at least two complete runs (will take about forty minutes or so). If the ram doesn?t get any errors in it than you can safely rule it out, but if it shows any errors ram is toast. If while running the program computer freezes up constantly, or reboots, it probably is the power supply.