Booting Up Restarting Cycle - VISTA

Hello,

A friend of mine told me today that his vista computer keeps restarting when it boots up. It just gets to the windows loading up screen then after 2 seconds it restarts again.

I suggested to him to try Safe Mode by pressing F8 and rolling to a previously working configuration. He said even then it still restarts and he can't do anything. He hasn't installed anything, including peripherals and no vista updates since last time he used it.

What else do you suggest? I guess without going into safe mode there's nothing he can do apart from re-formatting, right? Is there any way to back up somehow?

 

Check to make sure your friend doesn't have hardware problems. Run memtest to rule out the RAM, and reverse whatever the latest change to the system was.

 

May be a RAM problem indeed.

Just to clarify; the restarting happens before Windows fully starts up so I can't access system restore.
He told me that even when booting up in safe mode it keeps restarting before windows fully loads up but surely it should boot up properly in safe mode, right? He's also telling me he hasn't done anything, just watched a short video last time he used the computer.

 

Maybe the Windows installation is corrupted, in which he has to reinstall Windows if I remember right, no way to fix it.

Try starting up with each one of the RAM bricks alone if he has more than one.

 

Try "last know good configuration" as well as system restore, but I would definitely test the RAM... this is a classic "bad or damaged memory module" symptom.