The stability of a rotor with a cylindrical cavity, spinning with constant angular velocity and partially filled with an inviscid, incompressible fluid is studied. The rotor is elastically supported on a vertically mounted massless shaft in overhung position. A set of coupled linearized spatial equations of motion of the rotor and field equations, as well as boundary conditions of the liquid, is established and solved, leading to a characteristic equation. First numerical results predict a wide range of rotor speeds, where the system performs unstable motions caused by a two-dimensional surface wave of the liquid. The stability boundaries are calculated for a flat rotor in dependence on the mass of the contained liquid and agree extremely well with experimental data.