Can anyone help (computer)

[Apache]

A mate of mine heads a computer forensics team who do a lot of work for the Met. He tells me that they have sofware tools hardware devices which have a much better than evens shot of recovering data from anything but a smashed to pieces HD.

One of the more esoteric is a device which shifts the heads a microscopic amount to one side of the track where residual magnetism (not affected much by deep erasing) can be read.

Scary! If you have something you never want anyone to find, smash the disk platters to bits and toast the bits with a blowtorch. To quote an Alien film "its the only way to be sure"

[dirtydog]

good call Codlord, here it is and was exactly what I was going to say....
#8: Disable automatic restart
When Windows XP encounters a fatal error, the default setting for handling such an error is to automatically reboot the system. If the error occurs while Windows XP is booting, the operating system will become stuck in a reboot cycle--rebooting over and over instead of starting up normally. In that case, you'll need to disable the option for automatically restarting on system failure.

When Windows XP begins to boot up and you see the message Please select the operating system to start or hear the single beep, press [F8] to display the Windows Advanced Options Menu. Then, select the Disable The Automatic Restart On System Failure item and press [Enter]. Now, Windows XP will hang up when it encounters the error and with any luck, it will display a stop message you can use to diagnose the problem.

At least you will get an error message you can google.

Does it always restart at the same point/time in the boot-up sequence or does it vary? How far does it get? To the windows logo? to the desktop/login screen?

See here for useful tips, first off I would do #8 which will hopefully enable you to see the "blue screen of death", you can sometimes try googling some of the text on these messages and sometimes get an idea of where the problem might lie.
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com...1-6031733.html

If its a hardware issue (quite likely) then first take out and re-seat all cards/memory, maybe even the CPU if its easy. Then try to take out any components/cards/memory that are not essential. Try removing all but one memory stick, try different combinations of memory sticks in different slots. If no joy then try borrowing components to swap - i.e. graphics card, PSU. Power supply unit is not an obvious one as people think "well it powers up so it must be o.k." but I have had numerous weird problems like yours eventually tracked down to a just simply a "dodgy" power supply. Trouble is with a problem like this it could really be any component, motherboard, CPU, anything...

[BUSHWHACKER]

A mate of mine heads a computer forensics team who do a lot of work for the Met. He tells me that they have sofware tools hardware devices which have a much better than evens shot of recovering data from anything but a smashed to pieces HD.

One of the more esoteric is a device which shifts the heads a microscopic amount to one side of the track where residual magnetism (not affected much by deep erasing) can be read.

Scary! If you have something you never want anyone to find, smash the disk platters to bits and toast the bits with a blowtorch. To quote an Alien film "its the only way to be sure"

Or post it to Iraq. Our Government can't find f**k all over there!

[WARRIOR72]

i find getting it delivered by parcelforce 48 service will suffice youll never see it again from my experiences