WinXP Home freezes upon restarts...

[freakyhair]

I've run into this problem with windows xp home:

the computer normally starts fine, but after a restart it almost always freezes at or just before the white bar that rolls across the bottom of the screen. when i manually restart it, the safe mode menu comes up. If i choose anything but safe mode, it almost always freezes again at that menu screen. even if i do choose safe mode, it sometimes freezes (Mup.sys is the last .sys file shown). after another manual restart it usually starts up ok.

I have tried removing all peripherals besides the hard drive itself and video card and the memory.
I reinstalled windows (full reformat).
the current specs are:
-WinXP home, SP2
-1100Mhz Althlon (not sure what type)
-256MB RAM

Any advice???
Thanks!

 

[gerbiaNem]

SP2 has some compatibility problems with certain hardware, it may not be playing well when it comes to restarting. Try updating your system bios.

 

[freakyhair]

well, it has had this problem before i updated to SP2....BUT updating the BIOS may help anyway...