My Personal Computer is running Windows XP SP2. Problem is that it reboots itself every so often; at least several times a day. It can do so when I'm working or when I'm not even on it. I tried running a checkdisk but it can't get a lock on the volume, so it tells me one will be run on a reboot, but even if I manually restart right after running that command the reboot doesn't run a checkdisk

Looked on the internet and can find no reference for an XP box that won't checkdisk. Any ideas?

Did you try booting in safemode and running checkdisk? Or, reboot in safemode and let it sit for two days and see if it reboots. If it doesn't, then you have a service failing that it shutting your PC down.

Before you do any of that, take a look at the System Logs.

Right click My Computer --> Mange -->Event Viewer -->System

You should see when your computer rebooted in there. Take a look at a couple of the logs to see why it might have rebooted. It should tell you in there.

I managed to run a repair from an XP cd and do a chkdsk from DOS, which gets over 80% complete then fails with a Blue Screen of Death. Also I noticed when i boot normally i get an error that c:\$mft is corrupted and unreadable.

Searching that out on the internet the main suggestion I found was to goto Mac cuz the HD is close to being fried. Any conflicting opinions here?

That's your Master File Table.

Usually once that gets corrupt it's all over. You can rewrite the MFT from the XP CD, but that's pretty much like reformatting your HD. Try a fresh install of XP, or grab a new HD.

Do you have system restore enabled? If so, go back as far as you could and see if that helps. Better than nothing.

Can't tell you to go to mac, I've always avoided them.

I'm going to pull all the useful data off that HD and reinstall from the CD. thanks!

i got a solution for ya jamie!! haha