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Last night I went to turn my computer off. As usual, there was a dark screen (but with a mouse arrow visible, which was unusual). I jiggled the mouse as I always do to get the computer out of hibernation, but nothing happened. Ctrl-Alt-Del didn't work - I finally had to turn it off by holding the power button for 7 seconds.

I decided to turn it on again to make sure everything was alright. It booted up fine, but just as the last few icons started to appear on my desktop, the system rebooted. This happened a few times until I decided to start it in Safe Mode. It wouldn't work - a bunch of lines scrolled, and every time it stopped after listing a app40.sys file (or something close to that).

Then I decided to try "Last Known Good Configuration." It ran a CHDSK and stopped at 25% of the index (Step 2). I kept trying combinations of Safe Mode and Last Known Good Configuration; finally the LKGC booted up, completed the CHDSK, but rebooted as soon as the desktop was starting to appear. On my final attempt, I successfully started in Safe Mode, but as soon as I started to do a scan with Malwarebyte's Anti-malware, it rebooted again. At that point, I thought it might be a temperature problem, and called it a night.

I should probably add that earlier in the night, I had received a few warnings from Norton that several attempts to attack my computer were blocked, while visiting what were previously safe sites.

The last thing I did earlier in the night was try to find a stream of Flash Forward - I didn't start recording it until 7 minutes in, and hoped I could watch the first 7 minutes online (no success). Lots of sites wanted me to "take surveys" or install a video player - I did none of those.

I'm running XP Home on a 6-year old Gateway P4. I suppose I'm lucky to have gone this long without any problems.

As I'm writing this (on another computer), it seems to have booted okay using Last Known Good Configuration - it found and repaired lots of files, but I got a window pop up later that says one is still missing (A URL, though ?) I just deleted a lot of, err, videos to make more free HD space - it was getting quite full. That shouldn't be a problem now - it's almost 40% free space. Also, it asked if I wanted to report the problems, and I clicked "yes." I got a web page pop up from Microsoft saying "the report was corrupted, which is very rare, and usually indicates a serious problem with your computer."

Right now, I'm running a Malware scan (it's running excruciatingly slow - an hour now and only 70,000 objects scanned), and when that's finished, I'll run a full Norton scan, followed by an Adware scan. So far, nothing has shown up, but it hasn't gotten to the Windows folder yet. I have a feeling I'll have to re-install Windows, but when I tried that earlier this morning, it asked me for my Administrator password, of which I have not a clue. It gave me three tries and that's it - then it said "To reboot, press Enter." Plus - even if I can do a re-install, aren't I going to have to reset all my network and e-mail configurations?

Anyone with some helpful information out there? I'm no expert - far from it - but I think it's either malware or corrupt Windows files.

On the plus side, the computer has been running for over an hour now without rebooting, so it's an improvement from last night.

I'll edit this in a few hours if there's any news on the scans.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

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