my friend has win xp, no service packs installed.
he has a peculiar problem,
if he plugs his laptop to a power source, windows crashes with a blue screen with a message which is too fast to see.
then the laptop restarts automatically.
then a message comes which says that "ur computer has recovered from a serious error". any ideas on how to begin analysing this? if you need data, i will try and get it. thanks.

Can he start the laptop? If so the first thing he should do is install SP1.

Are you distinguishing between A/C power and battery?

As far as tracing past errors:

rt. click My Computer then click Properties then Advanced then Startup and Recovery Settings then unclick Automatically restart

Also: look in your Event viewer: rt. click My Computer then click Manage then Event Viewer.
Or: Administrative Tools/Event Viewer or Start/Run/ eventvwr
Open the system as well as the application tabs & look for X errors. Click error line for details.
Post back the source & event id & Description especially of errors that seem to coincide with this issue.
Also check the Information lines that might coincide with this issue.

How to view and manage event logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP

Also view your Error Log via:
[1] Start Menu
[2] Help and Support
[3] Pick a Task
[4] Tools
[5] Advanced System Information
[6] View the Error Log

If you want to try and analyze the XP errors:

Go to start | search (type in) .dmp
Note the location of your .dmp files.

Then:

1) Download and install the
Debugging Tools from Microsoft
2) Download and install this
debugwiz
3) Open the Wiz & Browse to, or paste in the path to, your .dmp file.
4) After the Wiz creates a Text document attach it back to this thread.