4 days ago I was in the middle of surfing the web on my Server 2008 machine, when it up and decided to reboot on its own. I figured, "probably a Windows Update." To my surprise it booted to a system recovery dialog, I rebooted several times, powered it all the way down, and it would not do anything but boot to the same dialog. Luckily, I had a backup. So I went ahead and recovered the system drive to the backup. It worked for 2 days and then bam. Same thing happened again. At this point I am wondering if it means, I have a virus, my hard drive is failing, or the motherboard is failing. Both the HDD and MB are farily old.

You might also try a Safe Mode boot. Failing that try Last Known Good Might also be hardware failure. The manufacturer may have tools for diagnostics. Regards, Dave Patrick .... Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft MVP [Windows]

I've had to do it several more times. It seems it is triggered by the latest Window's Updates. I have a list of 37 of them and am not sure which is causing it. If I restore from back up and do not update it seems to keep running. As soon as I run Windows update and everything installs, i goes to Recovery Mode on the next reboot.

Has the update readiness tool been run without error? http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/What-is-the-System-Update-Readiness-Tool Regards, Dave Patrick .... Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft MVP [Windows]

I am thinking virus or malware now. Been running it a few hours without updating and IE keeps redirecting to crap sites. What's a good recommendation for server 2008 and server 2003 virus scanners?

You could try that approach but personally I wouldn't bother. I'd clean install it. Regards, Dave Patrick .... Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft MVP [Windows]

Problem is I installed Oracle, Team Foundation Server, and Sharepoint. All of which were in a pain in the buttocks and took about 3 weeks to get working. I'd really rather not go through that again if I can help it.

Understood, but in my opinion the machine can no longer be trusted and must be rebuilt. Regards, Dave Patrick .... Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft MVP [Windows]