XP booting endless loop

[alanmason]

Hi,
I’m having intermittent trouble starting Windows XP Pro SP3 on my desktop. Sometimes it starts fine and sometimes it doesn’t. When it’s not behaving it will go to the “Windows encountered a problem, what do you want to do, start in safe mode, with networking, last known good config or start normally”. From here it won’t start normally or in safe mode, sometimes the last known good config works, but not always. Sometimes switching off for a minute will do the trick. All these solutions are hit and miss, they don’t always work. On extreme occasions I have to resort to the XP install disk. If I do nothing it will try to boot normally but crashes and tries to restart this is the endless cycle.
I have run all the usual cleanup progs and antivirus, firewall, spyware security i.e. Ccleaner, Spybot search & destroy, Auslogic defrag, Eusing reg cleaner, AGV 8.0 and Zone alarm. I don’t think there is anything malicious going on or that my system is full of junk.
I have a Micro-Star motherboard with Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz with 2gig of ram.
I’ve seen another post with a very similar problem here by gazmix but I don’t think the issue was resolved. From this post I investigated by C: drive using the WD Diagnostics utility, it passed the extended test. I also ran the CHKDSK utility and I guess it passed that too although the results flash up for only a second then the machine continues booting.
Any ideas of how to solve this problem will be gratefully received.
Maymo
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[RichieP]

It could be faulty RAM.

Take one stick out and restart. If it's the same, swap them over and try again.

[alanmason]

Right, sorry it's taken so long to do this; I thought that I had solved the problem but I haven't. I have 4 ram slots on my motherboard and had a pair of matching 1/2gb sticks and a single 1gb stick; I tried various combinations of these and some worked for a while and then the problem returned. I ditched all the ram and bought 4 matching 1gb sticks from Crucial. This worked on initial boot up but failed on restart. Any other ideas?
Maymo

[gazmix]

I have same prob!!! D you get this!!

"We appologise for the inconvenience, but Windows didn't start successfully.
A Hardware or Software change might have caused this

If your pc stopped responding, restarted automatically or was automatically shut down to protect your files & folders, chose 'last known configuration' to revert to most recent settings that worked.

If a previous startup attempt was interupted, due to power failure or because the power or reset button was pressed, or if your not sure what caused the problem, chose 'Start Windows as Normal'.

SAFE MODE
SAFE MODE WITH NETWORKING
LAST KNOWN CONFIGURATION PROMPT
START NORMALLY

Use up & down keys to highlight your choice.
Seconds to Windows start : 28 "

check this link out

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...236&dlc=en