[LordBlack]

Hi, this is my first post in a forum of this type so please be gentle. I bought a reconditioned Dell Dimension 5100 at the back end of last year for a £100, completely reinstalled version of XP Professional with all service packs installed as standard. Only other software was the latest version of AVG but beyond that it's all standard.

The other day I was knocking around as per usual using chrome. The machine froze, reset and attempted a reboot. Initial Dell screen passed without error but then I was presented with a text only screen giving options to restart xp as normal (with countdown for automatic restart) options for starting in safe mode and starting from the last known good windows start point. After selecting each of the possible options, there is a brief flash of the blue safe mode screen and then another full reboot as if the power has been cut.

I'm fairly au fait where computers are concerned and have fixed a plethora of machines over the years but this has me stumped. I've cleaned out the case, replaced the power supply with a new one, replaced all relevant on board batteries (always using anti static wrist band/gloves) and the problem still arises. I've also done the basic dell checks to see if there is a drive issue but everything seems to be working. The guy who sold me the machine is refusing to take any responsibility and wants to charge £200 for a fix. I don't have an XP pro disk to reinstall afresh because he uses it for all machines he "reconditions".

Any further advice regarding possible ways of resolving the issue in hand would be greatly appreciated. Sorry to have been less than concise. Just wanted to make sure I didn't leave anything out :-D

Thanks. LordBlack