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Originally Posted by ScaredLittleBoy  The forced reboot happened BEFORE the format and again during the XP installation (after I formatted the drive)... 
There is no specific process using the memory, just CPU usage is at 100%.
If it comes on again I'll have another look. spose I could try using the Repair console |
If you look at the processes tab on task manager it will list the progs running and give you a current CPU utilisation for each. Click on the CPU column twice it to sort them into descending order and see what is at the top - this will be what's using CPU cycles.
Also look at the memory usage. If you can ID the hog and kill it you may be able to get somewhere. If it's the system idle process running at or close to 100% you can ignore it - that's normal. If you can't and the disk is running flat out then it's possibly a corrupt driver or prefetch problem.
If you have repair disks they would be worth using, repair console will probably get you nowhere for this kind of issue but you may get lucky.
As the forced reboot was before the format it is
possible it's a RAM problem though I'm not convinced. If you have two sticks check they're the same, and if not take one out - just leave at least 256mb if you can!