XP won't start up - only get blue screen of death

[thrufio182]

I have no idea what happened. My computer was working fine then I get the blue screen of death and I can no longer start up windows. I've tried in safe, setting back to a previous state and everything in between. All I get is the blue screen. I try to run a system recovery and right after I agree to destroying all the hard drive content I get a error saying it cannot be done because a virus protection software is running. I even tried running an active kill disc to wipe out everything completely and it times out at 0%.

When this happened:
I plugged a USB (which I've had for over a month) and when I came back to the computer it was a blue screen. Any help is appriciated. I don't care if I lose the information I just want to get the computer working again if possible. Does this sound like a software or hardware problem.

thanks in advance

 

[raybay]

This seems to be a typical problem nowadays... You plug in a USB flash drive, and the computer goes bonkers.
Assume your flash drive is bad. What is the brand and model.

The boot to your windows CD and go through the steps to perform an R for repair and let Windows fix things.

Alternately, BSOD's are caused by memory problems nearly 70% of the time. So it may be time to boot to one memory module. Then shut down and reboot to the other memory module.

If one works, and the other does not, you know the problem.
But it takes a bootable machine to run most other tests.
Try a cold boot to <SAFE MODE> (Pressing <F8> repeatedly once per second as soon as you press the <ON> button. Then, if that works, run your other tests in safe mode.
It would be useful to download MemTest86 ISO mode on another computer so you can create a bootdisk for the problem computer. Boot to the disk and let MemTest86 run for four hours or seven passes, which ever is longer.
If nothing is found, that still eliminates the major cause so you can work or more simple causes.

 

[thrufio182]

The USB is a Kingston 8 Gb. I don't know the model number though I'll try some of the solutions you suggested and let you know if they worked