XP Rebooting on Startup

[chr.s]

Hello,

This all started yesterday when I tried opening Photoshop CS4, which I've been running for years.

First it began to load OK but very quickly sent my display into 640x480 which nothing except a reboot seemed to fix. I tried again, and exactly the same problem occured - no other programs would repeat the error.

I thought it may be a display driver issue (although Device Manager reported no issues), so I updated my GFX card (an ATI Radeon) drivers, which promptly made only part of the desktop visible, causing it to scroll whenever the mouse neared the edges.

I then tried a System Restore to about 2 days prior, and that's when Windows failed to boot up at all. It goes through the initial stages, but restarts just before the part where I'd normally log-on (i.e. when the GFX card has to kick-in).

My hunch is that the card has died, but I'd like to eliminiate other possibilities first, as I'm not exactly swimming in cash ATM - but I've little clue where to start.

Halp!

Edit: I'm running Windows XP SP3

[gerbil]

Depending on timings of your actions, using SR would have rolled back your drivers to what partially worked before, but did not again. Hmmm. What happens with Safe Mode?
A bit of info would be handy, your mb model and vid card model [ATI GFX doesn't really cut it].

[chr.s]

Seems to boot up fine into safe mode - would this suggest the graphics card isn't kaput?

I'm running Avira to see if there's any nasties floating around...
11 Detections and 1 Warning so far...

Apologies for lack of info, my specs are:
MB - Gigabyte EP45-UD3P
CPU - Intel Q9550
GFX - ATI Radeon HD4670

[chr.s]

All threats, according to Avira, are now deleted.

I restarted from Safe Mode but the problem still persists - I get to the Windows XP loading screen, and right before the log-in prompt it restarts.

[chr.s]

Well after not a lot of help anywhere on the web, I've finally sorted the issue - for now at least.

Booting into Safe Mode and getting rid of all drivers, then reinstalling from the ATI site all seemed to help. Photoshop opens as it always used to, so fingers crossed all is fine.

[gerbil]

Mmm... as you discovered, if the thing wouldn't boot in Normal mode, but did just fine in Safe mode, then very likely it was going to be a driver issue. In Safe mode the ATI graphics driver would not be loaded. Big finger-point.
Nice work.

[SaintThomas]

May be this is not you photoshop problem. but you photshop exe file is may be infected to virus or something like malware, spyware. so when you run it is exceute ans start spreading in you computer and corrupted your system file.