If your computer shuts down or crashes you might find yourself  in a annoying situation where the computer
continuously reboots in a loop while attempting to start Windows.

This may be caused by the registry becoming corrupt as a result of an application writing to the registry at the
time of a system crash. The next time the computer boots up and tries to read the registry the system fails and
has to restart.

To fix the problem

• When the computer restarts, shortly after the initial beep press F8
• Select "Boot from last known working configuration"

If the above does not fix the problem you might want to work your way through my How to service your PC article to replace and recover corrupted Windows files that might be causing the problem.

Steps to prevent continuously restarting during bootup

• Click Start
• Settings  (Skip on Windows XP)
• Control Panel
• System (May need to click "Switch to classic")
• Advanced Tab
• Press Settings button
• Uncheck "Automatically restart"

 

This will prevent Windows from restarting even when it encounters an error during the bootup process.