STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error}

[bmrmrb]

I have a PC which is giving this message at startup on a blue screen.

The message reads:

STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error}
The Windows Logon Process system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0x0000022 (0x00000000 0x00000000)
The system has been shut down.

No new software was installed on the machine directly before this message started appearing. Have started the machine in Safe Mode and used System Restore to go back to a previous date, which appears to have had no affect. Have looked on this page (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=316503&sd=RMVP) and this page (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=318666&sd=RMVP). But neither seem to apply to this machine as it has no norton software and does not have group policies in IE (that i know of). The machine is on a home wireless network and runs XP Pro.

I would backup all files and reinstall windows but the machine belongs to my little brother and he does not want to lose his game data.

Thanks for any help!

[toomyg]

Did you do any UPDATING of any software?

[bmrmrb]

It's my little brother's PC and we don't live together so i can only guess, he says no, but then he's 11 and might not necessarily take note of an automatic update. I do know that no updates were installed deliberately.

I'm following instructions on this page (http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1310257&page=1) at the moment (in absence of anything else to try). Was going to try an in-place upgrade as described here (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341/?FR=1) afterwards but may have a problem as the PC is second hand from a company that was liquidated or something so i don't have the disk which was used to install windows. I have another disk WinXP disk though...

[DynamicTech]

This is most likely a problem with the system's SAM file, which points to larger issues with the OS install. The best chance you have (IMHO) of correcting this error (and others that will follow), is to format and do a clean installation of the OS. Since you bought this comp second hand, the OS could have been used for who knows how long, the registry could be corrupt, there could have been a problem with the OS install, you could be using a pirated version of Windows, or some other problem.

[glc]

Remove the hard drive and slave it into another computer or put it in an external USB housing to save his data - then reinstall it and start from scratch.

I'd scan that drive for viruses and malware before doing the file recovery to avoid infecting the host computer - this issue is possibly caused by something nasty, maybe even a rootkit. If it finds something, after recovering the files, I'd zero fill the drive.

[toomyg]

I entered your stop error into yahoo and a bunch of stuff came up

check it out
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=STOP%3A+c000021a+%7BFatal+System+Error%7D&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8


It might help in not having this happen again:o