We've seen reports by Lee at Technibble here and at Hexus.net here about "endless reboots" on systems with Windows XP SP3 and AMD processors. I've seen some coverage out there that says "OEMs are at fault." Wait just a minute. Let's not be so hasty with such a broad brush of blame.
This is not an AMD or Microsoft issue. It's an issue of matching the correct software image with the correct hardware. I talked to our software engineers and it seems the real culprit is a driver called intelppm.sys. By the name, you can probably tell that this is an Intel driver…and it causes issues with AMD-based systems.
From my discussions with the engineers, I also wanted to set the record straight that Dell systems shipped out of the factory are NOT affected. Quite frankly, this is not a new issue and we've disabled this driver for AMD systems to prevent it.
If OEMs are shipping this Intel driver enabled on AMD machines – anyone else picking up this story, please leave Dell off the list.
If you do experience this issue, Microsoft has a support page that will walk you through a resolution.