Just to refresh, my main PC is being rebuilt after last december's disaster but faulty components delayed start. Meantime Ive been using a handy little Dell Inspiron Laptop which is normally very good and fast.
Saturday I was surfing the 'net with a friend who is looking for a 'Rescue Dog' without success.
When I tried to start up the dell later in the evening, it just went to start screen showing F2 setup and F 12 diagnostic. Screen stayed up for maybe 10 secs then rebooted and kept on like that.
I tried al the things you recommended lat year namely Avira rescue, Seatools, F-rescue & UBCD with no result.
Can it have picked uo a silly virus which makes it do that? I have a full set of Sunbelt, Counterspy, Vipre & Personal Firewall, paid for and registered. Vipre is running all the time inc. e-mails.
Any thoughts.

Probably unrelated, I bought another P 4 PC rehash for £50 just to tide me over which I'm using (Excellent quality and what a snip!) and resusciitated another PC P4 on which I'm intending to run Kubuntu open source just to experiment wih. Installation went well but now it too is in a loop!
That can't be a virus 'cos it's Linux.

Ah well, I must be your worst nightmare, Steve, Bill, Sterling, Tunz plus all the rest.
Help if you can?

docusk