I did not know that. Okay, that rules that one out.
Other than that, I can think of a few things that may be possible candidates. Your power supply could be malfunctioning, though this is unlikely. I'm no expert on PSUs but it's possible that there could be a small power anomaly that is worked around the second attempt. It's very unlikely, maybe even flat out impossible, but I don't want to rule it out.
Another possibility is that the motherboard itself is malfunctioning in a similar fashion to how I described the power supply failing. This is much more likely, and would explain all the blue screens and rebooting. (Did you also say that even now, after rebooting, it will stop working after a while? If so, then this furthers my suspicion that it is the mobo.)
The only other thing I can think of is that there's damage to the memory chip, and whenever Windows tries to do anything with it, it reboots. (Probably not.)
There is one other thing I thought of as I type, and it might be the cause: It could be that your IDE cable, connecting the hard drive to the motherboard, has a problem. Either it's not perfectly seated on one end, or one of the wires is shorting.
The two I'm going with are either Motherboard or IDE cable. Luckily, if you want to get another IDE cable, it's only about $5.00, and we both probably know how expensive it would be to get another mobo.
