I started getting this problem two days ago. Whenever I turn on my computer, I have about 3-5 minutes (including any time spent on the Windows login screen) before the computer crashes with the following bluescreen error message:

A problem has been detected and windows had been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed. If this is a new installation ask your hardware or software manufacturer for any windows updates you might need.

If problems continue, disable or remove any newly installed hardware or software. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup Options, and then select Safe Mode.

Technical Information:

*** STOP: 0x0000008E (0xC0000005, 0xB27F0BEF, 0xB2646A20, 0x00000000)

Beginning dump of physical memory
Physical memory dump complete
Contact your system administrator or technical support group for further assistance

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This happens to correspond with a spike in process usage of the process svchost.exe -k netsvcs, which uses around 100%, drops a while, then spikes a couple more times before finally crashing. This issue also does not seem to affect the computer in Safe Mode.

What should I do to fix this problem? Thanks in advance.

This KB article may be of use. If you are still running SP1, you'll want to upgrade regardless of whether that is the cause of this stop error, as support for XP SP1 is being stopped this month.

Otherwise, 8E's are Kernel Mode errors. These are usually cause by hardware conflicts/incompatability. Anything new there? You could try reinstalling or updating all you drivers.

If you aren't running SP1, and you haven't added hardware recently (or you upgraded your drivers and it didn't work) then I'd start looking at your RAM.