netbook keeps rebooting on xp startup

Scruff

My Aspire One has started to reboot everytime it tries to start windows. It gets past the black screen where it says its loading, the desktop starts up for a fraction of a second and then it reboots.
I can start it ok in safe mode and have disabled as many non critical services and apps that i can think of but no joy.
This started happening after i plugged out a usb hd with out doing it safely. I can still access the usb hd fine in safe mode.
Any ideas?
If i do need to reinstall XP how do i do it on a netbook? bootable usb drive?

Alanstrainor

Is there a recovery partition installed on the hd?

ongarite

Boot into safe mode with F8.
Go to Control Panel / System / Advanced / Startup & Recovery Settings.
Untick "Automatically Restart" in System Restart.

If the laptop is BSOD and automatically restarting, the error code provided can help narrow down what's causing the issue. The Event Viewer in Administrative Tools is also worth checking out.

Scruff

Alanstrainor wrote: »

Is there a recovery partition installed on the hd?

yup but this wipes all data from the HD so is a last resort.

i managed to start it in VGA mode and it works fine but as soon as i change the resolution it restarts again, even though auto restart is disabled.

Will try updating/reinstalling the graphics driver and see if it fixes it

/Edit
well reinstelling gfx driver didnt work but i've found a work around of sorts...
It boots and works completely fine if i have a usb device plugged into the port i took the usb hd out of unsafely as i said in my 1st post. if its removed, even safely, it reboots.
oh dear.
did i fry something internally on the motherboard by unsafely plugging out the usb hd in the 1st place?

CHW

Very strange behaviour... but I doubt it's a hardware problem.

Do you have in your BIOS setup to boot from USB? If yes, it might be worth disabling USB booting and see if this makes a difference.

Scruff

it boots from hd 1st, doesnt attempt to boot from the usb device which is down the boot order, just seems to need 1 in the effected usb port. if i plug it out the laptop reboots after about 2 secs. odd that it doesnt happen if i boot in vga mode, it works fine without anything in the usb port and is fully usable except with crap resolution.
very confused

/edit

i updated to the latest bios and it seems to have fixed it

CHW

Did you try uninstalling USB from the device manager? XP should be able to reinstall from a reboot - might be worth trying.

Another thing might be that it's trying to boot something other than normally. Did you try going to the boot menu and selecting "Start Windows Normally" or similar, with the USB device unattached?

Scruff

i spoke too soon. its started happening again
It gets a bit further than before, the desktop loads up but the it reboots. noyhing in the events logs