XP Crash During Start-up

Roughly every fifth time I boot my PC, XP hangs during start-up, then gives me a blue screen for about a half a second, and then restarts. I then get a screen giving me options on how to restart. I have tried restarting different ways and have removed many programs and tried again. Still the same thing, XP hanges and then crashes with a flash of the blue screen and restart.

If I select a normal restart after the crash, the pc usually starts and boots normally. Then another four or five normal starts and it crashes again with the blue screen.

Can anyone tell me how to step through the startup so I can try to figure out what is causing the crashes. If there is any reference material on how to trouble shoot something like this, please point me to it.

My fix to date is to leave the system running and working on the "Folding" project for the MajGeek Team. But I would like to correct whatever is causing the crashes.

The OS is XP Pro with all the latest updates.

 

Find out the cause:

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35246

 

I'd go to control panel-->administrative tools-->event viewer. You can see a log of errors for application, security, and system. You likely have a lot of entries. Clear the logs for each by highlighting them, and choosing 'clear all events' under the 'action' menu.

Now that your logs are clean, try rebooting your computer & check the logs afterwards, even if the computer doesn't crash. Make notes or take screenshots of whatever errors show up in the application & system logs, if any. Then reboot until it crashes, checking the logs each time. See if a particular error comes up after a crash. That might give us a clue as to what's causing it.

 

Thanks to both of you. I'll work on it over the weekend. It's too cold outside to do much of anything else.