Not sure if this is a software or hardware issue, but to me this seems the best category.
A few months ago my PC started this strange behaviour - at unexpected moments, I suddenly hear the hard disc make a short buzzing noise, followed by the computer spontaneously rebooting. When Windows returns I get "Windows has recovered from a serious error." This has seemed to happen more frequently when doing certain specific things (eg. just after signing onto Windows Live Messenger or while watching videos) but overall it's happened quite randomly, even, for example, when the PC has been idling for hours. It's started happening for no apparent reason, as I haven't changed anything important. Repeated virus scans with self-updating Norton AV also report no viruses. I thought perhaps the CPU was been getting too hot or something but the temp in the BIOS shows around 47 degrees; I seem to remember this as normal?
For months I have put up with this frustrating issue but for whatever reason, now it's rebooting itself right after displaying the Windows XP loading screen for several seconds, and it's doing it EVERY TIME so I'm totally unable to get into Windows now. I've tried the only things I can think of doing - booting into Safe Mode or resetting the BIOS settings to default but neither have helped.
Not only is it a huge inconvenience not to be able to use my PC but I'm also fairly worried as I've got 180GB odd of precious data on my hard disc, and I don't know how to access it without booting up into the selfsame Windows partition. I don't know what the hell is up, and whether this is a hardwar