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What to do about STOP: C000021a {Fatal System Error} and other scary messages
By TheEmperor | September 16, 2008
STOP: C000021a {Fatal System Error}
The session manager Initialization system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xc000026a (0×00000000 0×00000000)
The system has been shut down.
No one wants to see something cryptic and terrifying instead of their comfortable windows login page, but sometimes it happens. Sometimes you just get a flash from the screen and then the system reboots, but behind that flash is one of these nasty messages. Since my loyal subjects fear and despise these dreaded visitations by the BSOD I feel it is my sworn duty to vanquish them, read on for some comforting steps to recover from a BSOD attack.
The first step to doing battle with the BSOD is to reveal the nature of the particular menace you are at war with, to do that you’ll need to reboot your PC and tap the F8 key until the boot menu screen appears. Nownavigate down to the entry that says “Disable Automatic Reboot on System Failure” and press enter. Your system will still be struck down by the BSOD, but this time the little bugger will stick around to be identified.
Once you know the name of the creature you can begin your campaign of vengance. As a first step you should usually look up the error code on Google to see if there is a quick fix. The most common fixes are to boot to the Recovery Console and run ChkDsk or boot to Safe Mode and run SFC /SCANNOW. To boot to the Recovery Console you normally will need a windows XP disk of some kind, and SFC may request one as well if you have missing or corrupt system files that need to be replaced. One of these two steps will fix about 50% of all BSODs.
If both of these fail and there were no specific fixes you could find on Google then the next general solution is a Windows Repair. Again you will need a Windows XP CD for this step. Boot to the CD and choose to Install, then press F8, then choose the Repair option. This will force a reinstall all of the Windows System file.
**WARNING** If your BSOD is related to a missing REGISTRY HIVE or LSASS then DO NOT run a Windows Repair. It will only wreck the machine up further. For either of those issues contact me for assistance.
If the Windows Repair fails, especially if it fails with errors about an inability to copy files then your hard drive has most likely failed in some way. To recover your data you can attempt a Parallel installation of windows or you can remove the drive and attach it to another PC and copy the data off of it.
To perform a Parallel install insert your Windows XP CD and boot to it, choose to Install, press F8 and choose to install on your current partition. Choose to leave the file system intact. The installation will ask you if you want to overwrite the current windows directory or choose a different one, choose a different one. Name it c:\win-repair or something similar and let the install continue. If it succeeds you will be able to boot to a new, fresh copy of windows and see all of your data. At this point it is recommended that you backup all of your data and replace the hard drive as it is likely to fail again.
As you can see the BSOD, while on the surface a horrifying many tentacled engine of terror, is really quite simple to deal with. It may look like it has devoured the last 4 years of your financial records, but a few swift kicks will encourage it to regurgitate them and keep you out of the psyche ward.
As always, feel free to donate to The Empire if you find this helpful.
Topics: 0xc000026a, blue screen of death, bsod, c000021a, helpdesk, reboot loop, windows repair |
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