Win XP doesn't start up

Stephen P

A friend of a friend is having trouble with his PC. He has XP (Home Ed. I think??) When he turns it on and then clicks on his user account to log into the machine, a dialog pops up, saying nothing with just a Yes & No button and that "critical stop" icon on it, which ever button is pressed the PC shuts down. I had a look at it last weekend but didn't have time to look at it properly, he asked me to look at it again later tonight, so I thought I'd come on here to see if I could get some advice first. At the weekend I started it up in Safe Mode and checked the system properties and they seem fine to be able to handle XP, he only installed XP so I thought the system might not be able to handle it but I think it looks OK.
What else should I be looking at to see what the problem is??
Could it be a virus? He was unclear whether it had an anti-virus program installed on it. I was thinking it might be a virus but surely it would even let you start it up??

Any ideas greatly appreciated!!!

garthv

burn an anti-virus program onto a disc (www.grisoft.com) and bring it over with you. Boot the pc into safe mode and run the scan,if nothing turns up then its a re-install