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"Fatal Error" when booting XP

3K views 3 replies 3 participants last post by  kiljoix 
#1 ·
I have Windows XP professional installed on the c: drive of my computer and I have Linux Fedora Core 3 on a second hard drive. The dual boot option screen functions fine and I don't suspect that Linux has anything to do with XP's problems, but I suppose I could be wrong. My prime suspect is the Partition Commander software that I recently installed because I have heard that partition managing software is known to cause the same autocheck problems that I have seen.
When XP starts to boot it goes to a light blue screen that reads:

autochk program not found-skipping AUTOCHECK

that lingers for a bit and then a bright blue screen comes up that reads:

Top: c000021a {Fatal System Error}
Teh Session Manager Initialization process terminated unexpectedly with a
status of 0xc000003a (0x00000000 0x00000000).
The system has been shut down

So my approach so far was to boot from the install disk from my XP home edition that came with the Dell computer package (I could not find the install CD for the XP proffessional that is currently installed) and make a repair attempt. Chkdsk found nothing wrong but I ran it anyway to no avail and then I tried using fixboot command and still the same two error screens come up. Also I tried to boot up in safe mode but couldn't. I have most of the drive's data backed up on CD's so reinstallation is an option but I would really like to avoid the time and energy expenditure of locating the XP Pro disk and reloading all of my files.
Thanks for your help.
pat
 
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#2 ·
Hi, I sympathize, recently I worked this out for a client...but, the only thing that did work it out, was a full reinstall. You are in a slight bind> Your Dell XP Home Recovery CD will not want to do anything while XP Pro is installed> it will not run over top of a higher version of Windows.

You should be able to use a format utility to clean the drive, then re-run the Dell disk to restore to factory condition, upgrading to XP Pro is up to you after that.

(I use Active Killdisk, a free utility> Get the Free version here:

http://www.killdisk.com/

OR> If when you installed XP Pro, you opted to format and install XP Pro, then you should be able to boot with the Pro CD and do the Quick format and reinstall...

Make sure your CD drive is the first boot priority device in your BIOS, and with the Pro CD in the tray, SAVE and EXIT the BIOS, the CD should boot the computer for you, follow the prompts when it detects a previous operating system, to delete the partition that holds Windows and to format and reinstall.

Unless others can find a way to repair this error, that's the way I would go.

I worked at it for several hours, did all you did and another whole command type fix that did not change anything...to no avail, but a clean install had it back working in no time.
 
#3 ·
kiljoix said:
I have Windows XP professional installed on the c: drive of my computer and I have Linux Fedora Core 3 on a second hard drive. The dual boot option screen functions fine and I don't suspect that Linux has anything to do with XP's problems, but I suppose I could be wrong. My prime suspect is the Partition Commander software that I recently installed because I have heard that partition managing software is known to cause the same autocheck problems that I have seen.
When XP starts to boot it goes to a light blue screen that reads:

autochk program not found-skipping AUTOCHECK

that lingers for a bit and then a bright blue screen comes up that reads:

Top: c000021a {Fatal System Error}
Teh Session Manager Initialization process terminated unexpectedly with a
status of 0xc000003a (0x00000000 0x00000000).
The system has been shut down

So my approach so far was to boot from the install disk from my XP home edition that came with the Dell computer package (I could not find the install CD for the XP proffessional that is currently installed) and make a repair attempt. Chkdsk found nothing wrong but I ran it anyway to no avail and then I tried using fixboot command and still the same two error screens come up. Also I tried to boot up in safe mode but couldn't. I have most of the drive's data backed up on CD's so reinstallation is an option but I would really like to avoid the time and energy expenditure of locating the XP Pro disk and reloading all of my files.
Thanks for your help.
pat
do you have roxio goback installed ??
 
#4 ·
Hey thanks for the great suggestions, as it turns out the partioning software had "hidden" the XP partition in order to make it accessable only through the softwares own boot commander. Anyhow I was able to unhide the partition from Linux so crisis was averted.
thanks
patrick
 
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