Hi everyone!
I am sorry if this is a repeated post, I have tried looking for an answer before posting.
I am not very computer savvy, but I know a tiny bit :-)
Ok, we have a Compaq presario desktop which is relatively old (about 4 years). It is stock standard. When I tried to start it up this morning this is what happens...
The tower lights up and sounds normal, keyboard lights up as normal, monitor lights come on as normal, and then I get the black screen with white writing telling me "we apologise for the inconvenience...." and I have to options to start in safe mode, starting windows normally, last known good configuration etc, and it counts down.
If I just leave it, it takes me to the windows/microsoft XP loading screen, loads for a few seconds, then I get a really quick flash of a blue screen (so quick that I can't read anything on it), the monitor goes into power saving mode and the whole process starts again.
I have just left it, because people have said on here that their computers have started up normally after doing this about 10 times, but not for me....been happening for about 2 hours now!
I have tried starting it in safe mode and last known good configuration but it does exactly the same thing.
I am able to change the battery in the tower and clean stuff, but anything more than that I don't know enough. My husband said he downloaded an update for adobe last night, but other than that there have been no changes.
Any advice on what I can do or check would be appreciated before I take it to the computer repairers :-)
Thank you in advance for your help and please excuse my ignorance.

I'm probably not the best person on daniweb to try and help with this issue, but I'll give it a shot until someone else chimes in ....

A computer rebooting itself could be numerous things. Have you installed any hardware on the computer recently within the last week maybe? My first suggestion would be to unplug everything from your computer except your keyboard (a basic keyboard), your mouse (a basic mouse), and your monitor. Boot it up and see if you still get an error.

If it is a software issue, you may need to run system restore to restore your computer to the settings from the last restore point using the windows cd.

You could also try to boot into the recovery console using the windows cd and try running fixmbr when you get to the command prompt.

Hi and thanks for the reply!
I will give your suggestions a go and let you know how I go!
Thanks again
Coasty

Will agree to that, but I guess that is a software issue. Try to restore to default setting first. Afterward if that doesn't work you have to reformat it.

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