PCTech Forums

Hi,
My mains power went out for a few seconds while running a Norton Internet Security scan on my PC (I'm sending this from a friend's PC).
When the power came back on, the PC can't reboot - it gets so far, then shuts down again, over and over.
The screen now says:

STOP: c000021a Fatal System Error
The session Manager Initialization system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0 x c000026c (0 x 00000000 0 x 00000000).

Any help would be much appreciated!
Many thanks,
Richard

Have you tried Last Known Good Configuration?

Restart Windows, after you see the BIOS screen and before Windows starts to load.
Start tapping the F8 key. The Windows Advanced Options Menu appears.
Use the arrow keys to select Last Known Good Configuration, and then press enter.

If that doesn’t work then it could also be the User32.dll file may be missing or damaged
in that case you will need a windows Xp CD.

Insert the Windows XP CD-ROM into the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive, and then restart the computer.
When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start Recovery Console.
To select you windows install type 1 and press enter
When you are prompted to do so, type the administrator password, and then press enter.
(In Windows XP Home Edition, the administrator password is\ blank by default.)
At the command prompt, type the following command, and then press ENTER:
cd windows\system32

To rename the User32.dll file, type the following command, and then press enter:
ren user32.dll user32.bak

To expand a new copy of the User32.dll file from the Windows XP CD-ROM to the System32 folder,
type the following command, and then press enter (where d = your cd-rom is the drive letter);
expand d:\i386\user32.dl_ c:\windows\system32

Type exit, press enter, and then restart the computer.