XP home crashing loop (consistency and dump)

[msb2ncsu]

A friend of mine has a Gateway that he is having problems with. The computer is an Intel PII 300 with 192MB Ram, Quantum HDD, and some other stuff. Couldn't tell specific MoBo model cause I can't see crap in that case. Oh and he is running Windows XP Home. Well anyways...

A couple days ago he went to MS Update and got the latest recommended and critical updates for his PC and ever since then his PC has been on the fritz. Now it goes through this continuos loop: (will edit this when I get home to be sure all messages are correct)

Boots up and gets to a screen saying that its checking for drive consistency with FAT 32
It says 3 files were found and repaired.
It then proceeds to boot up and reach the XP "welcome" screen but then goes black.
BSOD saying that the computer must perform a physical memory dump and counts down then reboots.
The process then repeats itself.

He can get into safe mode just fine and browse the internet and everything. We are really stumped as to what to do here.

 

[MacaroneePenguin]

Check for virus.

 

[rectifire]

I'm surprised that WindowsXP actually even worked acceptably on that machine, given that the system requirements for XP "recommend" a 300 Mhz Processor or greater (with the absolute minumum required being a 233 Mhz CPU.) We all know how accurate these recommendations are.

I'd say most people would agree that if you want any type of real functionality with XP, you need >500 Mhz Processor.
IMHO, If I were him, I wouldn't even attempt to run WinXP on that system.

 

[MacaroneePenguin]

Yeah, he's right about that. Win2000 or NT is really not supposed to run a Pentium 2 system even though you have 192MB ram. Having a P2 system probably means that your HDD and CDROM drives are runnint at ATA33 which isn't too good for WinXP. Stick with Win98. Not only will your system run faster but it will be more stable for you.