Comments on: Vista: Stop: c000021a {Fatal System Error}, The initial session process or system process terminated unexpectedly.

By: Mike B

Mike B — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 18:06:41 +0000

This really works! This is the only solution I found that fixed my wife’s comp! This blog is awesome. BTW, I used Ubuntu disk to change files.

By: Paul

Paul — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 09:47:21 +0000

Hi,
I would love to follow these instructions, but I also get “the process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process” so i can’t rename Software to Software.old

Is there a way to fix this? In the meantime i’m trying “startup repair” because… well, nothing else works – what harm can it do?

By: Ted

Ted — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:51:28 +0000

If you all are confused on the solution to this the following worked for me:

Use a USB Sata device (or any equivalent) to hook the failing/corrupt hard drive up to a working computer. You can then access that failing drives files.

Navigate to the drive (in this case I will use E:\ as my example for the bad drive):

- E:\windows\system32\config
- Rename the file SOFTWARE to SOFTWARE.BAD
- Navigate to E:\Windows\System32\Config\RegBack
- Copy the file SOFTWARE.OLD
- Paste the SOFTWARE.OLD to the E:\Windows\System32\Config folder.
- Reboot the machine.

The computer should now reboot using the SOFTWARE.OLD file rather than the original Software (now software.bad) and boot to Windows correctly. Be sure to remove any newly installed software which could have caused this problem. I recommend using Revo Uninstaller. You might want to also make copies of SOFTWARE and SOFTWARE.OLD files just in case something goes wrong.

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 22:19:53 +0000

@ Ankush

Hi there!

I’m afraid I have the same problem as Jim there but I can’t really understand the wording of your solution to his problem. If you were to reword it – possibly simplify it – I would be very grateful. Its really just this step I’m missing from getting my comp up and running again

By: hans

hans — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:34:21 +0000

marry me! it worked. Great!

By: Andrew Moore

Andrew Moore — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 19:41:54 +0000

How do you get a WinPE disc?

By: Ankush

Ankush — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:20:03 +0000

@carl…
thanks a ton man….it worked…i thought i’ll have to format but your idea just went fine..

@jim

first go to your windows installation directory,
then after apply the commands.Don’t apply in windows installation disk directory.i made the same mistake too firstly..

thanks again carl..!!!! u \m/

By: Louie

Louie — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:50:40 +0000

OMG This helped me! After 4 days of trying! Thank u so much! Iove you man!

By: akita767

akita767 — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 22:24:19 +0000

May I ask, is the cause of this a virus? I am having the same problem with my hp laptop and thought it was from a virus sent to me in an email.

By: adam

adam — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:18:02 +0000

hey guys im having major problems

a couple weeks ago my computer running vista 32bit would not boot up by itself and if i put in the boot disk and use start up repair and it would work fine then it would randomly shut down. now i just get the blue screen of death saying c000021a 0×00000000 (0xc000000 0×001006000)

does anyone know how to repair this without having me lose all my files??

also i took out the bad hardrive of my computer put it in an external case but cant excess the files because theres my user password on it and i do not know how to access it. is there anyway to get around the password or enter the password to access my hdd??

help is much much appreciated!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-adam