PC freezes when loading XP

[jakkusto]

My friend has been having intermittent problems on his computer, where the system randomly restarts/reboots either while sitting idly, or when using applications. I've got a little experience in troubleshooting so I thought i would try to help him. Long story short, I went into BIOS today and set the POST to do a full test, just to see if it would find anything wrong. After I saved and exited, POST did its thing and everything came back normal. Then the screen that asks if you want to load windows in safe mode, last known good config, ect. came up (I had restarted his computer initially, but his moniter never displayed anything - kind of like it was asleep - after a minute of not being able to get anything out of it, i did a hard power off), i selected "start windows normally." Here's the problem: the next screen, where it shows the XP logo/loading bar, froze almost instantly, and it actually froze halfway faded in because it happened so fast. After a couple of retries w/same response, i tried going to last known good config - same thing. then i tried safe mode. It froze while loading. I've tried loading safe mode a bunch of times, and it always freezes while loading the drivers, and right after this particular point:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS\system 32\drivers\mup.sys

The system was working fine before this, and i've personally restarted it many times in the last few days with no errors like this. There were no changes made between when this happened and the last time it worked fine, besides me disabling quick boot in BIOS. It's really hard to figure out whats going on as i can't even access safe mode....any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

His specs as far as i know (if you need more details let me know):
Pentium 4 3.0 Gh
ABIT Motherboard
Maxtor 160 GB harddrive
PNY nvidia AGP video card i think its a 5 series

[jakkusto]

I just went back to resart the computer and see if i could get lucky, and the bios did a high to low alternating beep code that kept repeating. I guess that indicates a bad/failing CPU...i did notice earlier in the BIOS that his CPU was running at 70 C/150 F, which is high, however, BIOS didnt do this before when i initially restarted the computer (before the problem; also, he had left it on all night and all day until about 2:00 PM today when i restarted it, that's also when i noticed the heat level). I guess I'll try to clean out the fan and the heatsink from dust and see if anything progresses with this.

[Whyzman]

...I guess I'll try to clean out the fan and the heatsink from dust and see if anything progresses with this.That's where I'd start...it probably needs a good cleaning.

If there's an intake fan on the front you might want to consider what I have on mine. I use a window air-conditioning foam filter. They are very inexpensive. I cut a piece to fit between the front bezel on my case and the fan. When dirty it can either be washed out, or another piece cut.

[jakkusto]

Yeah, the heatsink was literally covered in a blanket of dust, i guess its been a long time since it was last cleaned...that seemed to solve the beep code problem and the freezing up problem too. Thanks for the advice!

[Whyzman]

That's good to hear! The symptoms you described certainly pointed to probably heat problems... The filter I mentioned really helps and makes maintenance mighty simple.