Hi peeps I posed here a while ago about my girlfriends laptop and XP's taskbar hanging at startup. This was due to the Background Intelligent Transfer service hanging. I have since unchecked this service in msconfig. The laptop has only a few programs on it but now, sometimes the pointer on the screen goes mad and the start menu opens and closes and windows move and open and close (like you would get if you plugged a serial data feed into your com port and windows detected it as a mouse - it would go beserk). Then shortly after the machine restarts. I am reinstalling the laptop from scrath. I am also going to uncheck the "automatically restart checkbox". Any ideas, comments or suggestions welcome! Is there a Service Pack for XP yet?

You didn't mention on this post what type of laptop your girlfriend has. I've seen this problem with the IBM Thinkpads after upgrading to Windows XP. Go to site of manufacture and get update on bios as well as any updates they may have for the pointer.

xp has an auto re-start feature in the event of a failure. The only problem is that you can't necessarily find out what it is. Go to help and find out how to shut off this feature. At least this way when it screws up you can read the screen and find out what the error message is (for all the help that might get you)