This behavior can occur if the following conditions exist:
A fatal system error (STOP error) causes the computer to stop.
The Automatically Reboot option is enabled under Recovery on the Startup/Shutdown tab in the System properties.
Note: In Windows Server 2000, the Automatically Reboot option is enabled in the Startup and Recovery dialog box. This dialog box appears after you click the Startup and Recovery button on the Advanced tab in the System properties.
The Windows paging file is smaller than the amount of physical memory installed in the computer or there is insufficient free space on the system hard disk to write the error dump file (Memory.dmp).
To work around this issue, you require a parallel installation of Windows.
To make the necessary changes, follow these steps:
Install Windows to a different folder.
Run Regedt32.exe from the new installation of Windows, and then go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE key.
On the Registry menu, click Load Hive, and then open the System file in the original Windows installation location. By default, this installation is located at %SystemRoot%\System32\Config\System.
Enter an arbitrary name when you receive a prompt for a key name in the Load Hive window. This loads the original HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE hive as a subkey of the current key.
Change the value data in the AutoReboot value to 0 (zero), instead of 1, in the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\CrashControl
Collapse the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE subkey and unload the hive.
This disables the Automatically Reboot option in the original Windows installation. After you follow these steps, you may be able to gather information from the STOP error message and resolve the problem that prevents the computer from starting.
