Okay all, here's the deal (or mess). My desktop suddenly began automatically rebooting at startup just after Windows (XP) initialized, leaving me only with a VERY short error message about the lack of virtual memory. I tried many things such as moving the hard drive to another desktop shell and booting up from there: no change (meaning no power supply or mem disk problem); running a Windows Repair: no luck; deleting pagefile.sys file: still no change; moving the memory stick (512) to another slot; you guessed it, nothing!; and finally, reloading the entire OS: success. Of course, that came at the cost of losing everything on the HD (it was not a heavily used system so no major loss there). Because I only had a WinXP upgrade disc, I had to first load WinME first and then the upgrade, but it works fine now. What I'd LIKE to know is this: any thoughts on what I COULD have done to repair the OS without taking such a drastic (and timely) measure? I'm just curious because I now know without a doubt that something was corrupt in the OS, but I couldn't find it. Any thoughts folks?
R

Which Windows repair did you run? There are two, each at different stages of the windows install routine. The second repair option replaces all the crucial windows files and reboots - trouble is that whilst it works most of the time you have no idea what the problem was that just got fixed!

Windows repair used - not a clue!

I really don't recall which one, and to be honest I only remember one option when queried: 1) c:WINDOWS (or something like that).

I do know that I had to call MS to get the product key because I couldn't find the Upgrade key, but it was worth the $10.00. And the first time I tried to do the repair it failed, probably because of the incompatibility with the with XP Upgrade and whatever was on the HD at the time (don't recall that either). Very puzzling, but I'd sure like to know where the corruption was. Thanks for your thoughts.