Startup Problems

I'm hoping this is the right place to post this. Please tell me otherwise.


My parent's computer is playing up. Everytime it starts up, and gets past the Windows XP loading screen, it restarts. It has done this in a constant loop for the past twenty minutes; And I'm not sure what to do. I am not an expert with PCs (I'm more of a Mac person) and neither are my parents. I'd like to know if there is any way of starting up without XP, as XP seems to be the problem. I will give you the situation to assist you:

I turn on the computer.
It has been shut down improperly - so it runs the ChkDisk utility.
This takes about ten minutes to complete, so by now I am concerned.
The XP professional screen pops up, with a progress bar.
XP professional screen disappears, and computer restarts.

It now repeats these steps but without the ChkDisk utility coming up.


Computer spec:

It is quite an old computer (about six years or so - came with W98)
XP professional installed.
Four users, with me as the only Administrator.

I have also tried the 'Safe Mode' startup options, to no avail (It gets up to a certain point - Mup.sys in 'Drivers' folder of system32).


As I said, I am not an expert, so any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

to simplify this . i would reinstall win xp as an upgrade. once this is done it should start fine