From billy021108 in the PC Support Forum:

Hi all, please can someone help!

I have a laptop with XP and put a CD in to play which I have done endless times before. The laptop just froze and wouldn't do anything, even after pressing Control, Alt & Delete.

It comes up with the  message that it needs to start in one of the following, safe mode, safe mode with command and safe mode with networking or start windows normally. It doesn't matter which one I try it quickly tries to load the windows XP files but just keeps returning to the same message as above.

I just can't get it beyond any of the stages above - I have very limited IT knowledge so sorry if I'm not giving enough info. I just don't know what else to try.

Any troubleshooting thoughts for billy021108? My guess would be a repair install but maybe you have some other suggestions. Click over to the forum post and share your thoughts.

No time like the present.

The Automatic Restart on System Failure option is very simple to understand - if Windows encounters a serious error (like a Blue Screen of Death) it will reboot your computer automatically since that's the only way out of it anyway.

However, if your computer restarts as soon as the error occurs, it gives you absolutely no time to read and write down the error message for troubleshooting purposes.

The catch 22 here is that you have to make this change from within Windows, so if you lose access to Windows via a serious error, you're out of luck. Disabling this option right now is easy and will save you a lot of time in the future if you ever suffer from one of these issues.

How Do I Disable Automatic Restart on System Failure in Windows?

I should note, in Windows Vista and Windows 7, there is a way to disable this option from the Advanced Boot Menu, but it's still considerably easier to just do it now, from inside a working copy of Windows.

From a guest poster in the PC Support Forum:

Hello.. my computer freezes up a lot. I have Windows XP.  Does that Reg Cure really scan and fix all the problems or is there a cheaper/easier method?

Any ideas for our guest? Head on over to the forum post and leave your thoughts.

I say some good, classic troubleshooting is in order and if using a registry cleaner ends up being a troubleshooting step, you might as well use a free one. Something tells me this "Reg Cure" software is hardly the panacea I have a feeling it makes itself out to be.

From jagxk in the PC Support Forum:

Updated Quicktime and the final step was to restart the PC (running XP Prof). The screen which follows a crash and offers: normal, safe mode, etc appeared. Clicking any of the options produced the same result, a brief flicker of the Windows logo before the screen cycled through a power saving message, the manufacturer logo and back to the first screen with its start options.

I have tried starting using the original product recovery CD-ROM from F-Siemens but even clicking random keys during the start-up process produces no result other than freezing the 30 second countdown to "start normally" as does clicking F2.  A 'wiggle' test has not made any difference. The PC has no previous history of this sort.

How do I begin to analyse and then correct the problem when I can't get it to turn on?

Any thoughts for jagxk? Head over to the post and see if you can help.