There is an option to have the system auto-reboot when it encounters a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death).

One of the biggest mistakes that MS made when developing XP, IMHO, was to enable this "feature" by default.

The practical upshot of this is that if XP encounters a fatal error, there is a flash of blue and then it's reboot time.

I suspect that MS enabled this feature just so that users never saw a BSOD, and therefore assumed it was a power problem or something they did... but maybe I'm just paranoid

While this is a good idea if you want to ensure that an unchanging and unattended server that goes down does not stay down, it is not such a good idea for a home user. If you just installed hardware or drivers that XP does not like you can find yourself in an infinite cycle of reboots... which is VERY difficult to fix.

So, How do you disable this feature? I'm glad you asked... Bring up the system properties (It's in the control panel, keyboard shortcut is WIN+Pause/Break). Go to the Advanced Tab, Startup and Recovery/Settings, Uncheck the "Automatically Restart" button.

The next time it crashes, you will see the familiar NT/2000 BSOD that we all know and love... but at least you will have information to help you diagnose the problem.

Prang

I agree with Wizard on this one. When you disable autoreboot Windows basically closes itself out when it has an error. The last time my computer BSOD (I have autoreboot disabled - and was using Quicktime) I heard my PSU click off just fractions of a second before the BSOD showed up. I think my computer was in a state of suspension.

Either way it doesn't matter because the BSOD allowed me to Google a solution to my problem on the next boot - Quicktime.