My neighbour has just had this endless reboot problem (which I've been called on to fix) and at first i thought it was the gdi32.dll problem but after a few hours troubleshooting it turns out i was wrong.

I understand that the problem is with machines where XP was installed from a sysprep image where the original machine has an Intel processor and the target machine has an AMD. There is a registry key that tries to load an intel driver which is normally ignored but for some reason SP3 sets this off again and as the box has an AMD it barfs with a STOP 0x0000007E error which is immediately intelligible to serious windows dudes. Maybe.

So if you've installed your own copy of XP you should be OK.

If anyone wants to contradict this assertion, please go ahead I'm not a windows expert, i just use Solaris and Fedora.

I love these comments, it gives you the chance to show how stupid you are in front of the thousands / millions / one billion squintillion* supremely expert Reg readers out there.

* suggestion for a new unit. One billion squintillion = 1 Reg readership.