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Saturday, November 04, 2006

Fatal Error C000021a

4th November 2006

Ok peeps after lots of fiddling here and there and pouring out my eyesight & destroying my brain cells, I finally figured out what the hell was causing my Windows XP Home Edition to unable to boot up properly.

Listen up to those who are currently facing this problem and DO NOT KNOW the cause.. If your computer keep restarting by itself everytime you try to boot up into your Windows XP Home Edition, then you are facing this problem.

Symptom:
After installing Roxio GoBack (available when you install Norton System Works), and attempt to restart your pc, you may receive this message error:

C000021a [fatal error]
The session manager initialization system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xC00003a ... or something like that

Cause:

When you installed GoBack, it is present in the boot sector, thus causing lots of inconviniet to people like me..

If you can't view the error message, when you boot up your pc, highlight the infected Windows XP Home Edition and then press F8 button.

1) From the menu with all those options of Safe Mode, Start Windows Normally etc..

2) Choose Disable Restart Automatically When Boot System fails (or something in that line.. can't remember the exact option).

3) Then when you restart it again, you can see the error message.

Solution:

  1. Ok once you have done that, start Windows as per normal or you can restart your pc, both ways work for me.
  2. During StartUp process, press SPACE to access GoBack option menu.
  3. When prompted, choose the Disable GoBack Options, and let the pc complete the StartUp process.

Your Windows XP should work just nicely after that and it will bring you back to your beloved Windows XP. From here, you can choose to uninstall GoBack by manually uninstalling it in the Control Panel => Add/ Remove Programs.

In my case, I just prefer to let GoBack irritate me everytime I load up my Windows XP, prompting me whether I want to Activate GoBack, which I Do NOT want..

Hope it works for those of you who are wrecking your brains out.. If you got any qns, just holler me, I'll try my best to answer your them.

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