I rarely if ever have to reinstall and operating system once I get it on a computer, so let me give a few tips that might avoid some headaches or an unnecessary OS reinstall. If any of this sounds a little overly obvious, bear with me. Sometimes a very simple problem can be the cause and I like to try to cover every possibility, and I don't know everyone's level of technical expertise.
First, don't rule out a hardware problem. Software can cause rebooting, true, but usually unintended reboots are a sign that the motherboard or power supply may have a fault. Other peripherals can cause stability issues as well. If you have a floppy drive try booting to a floppy or else boot from a CD or USB, and leave the computer at a command window. Remove the CD or floppy, etc, and let the PC run on its own. If it reboots itself then it's definitely a hardware issue.
If the system still reboots itself without going into Windows, then the best thing to do is to strip the system down to the bare essentials - mainboard, cpu, ram, video, boot off something other than the hard drive, and see if the problem stops. If you have more than one memory module, try removing one, testing, and if it still occurs, remove that one and replace the other. If the problem persists, odds are either the CPU, video, motherboard, or PSU is faulty. Unfortunately most of the time it's the motherboard. Also, don't forget to check on the PSU's fan. If it's not turning you'll definitely have problems. Also, it's a good idea to open the case, dust it out, and observe if all the fans start when booting the system. One malfunctioning fan can cause overheats on components and that will definitely cause problems, up to and including component damage.
If the system behaves normally except when booting into Windows, you might try using the repair function on the Windows CD. I've found that sometimes a full reinstall can be avoided by booting from the CD, running the repair tool, and then reconfiguring as needed. Also, don't overlook SAFE mode! If your computer boots fine into SAFE mode, then you can pin it down to a piece of software and avoid a full reinstall. You can also use the msconfig tool for selective booting, disabling and enabling one piece of software at a time. If the computer runs fine in SAFE mode but reboots when going into windows normally, use msconfig to disable all your startup stuff and re-enable in blocks. Once you hit the problem, isolate it to the single piece of software in question and you've found the culprit. Virus scanning in SAFE mode also works better as a lot of malware relies on normal boot processes to load and a lot of times the common but poorly written stuff can be ejected from the system just by booting into SAFE mode and running a virus scan from there instead of a normal boot. If you're not familiar with the msconfig utility, just go to Start->Run and type "msconfig" in the window. It's a very useful debugging tool, and you can set it in SAFE mode and boot into Windows normally with all the stuff disabled, then start hunting for the problem.
If you do decide to reinstall Windows for whatever reason, typically I install drivers in this order:
1) Chipset, unless the install screen is unreadable without the video driver, then Video first.
2) Video
3) Network
4) Audio
5) Anything else
The chipset drivers are the most important, so I always try to get those on first thing.
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