“Stop: c000021a {Fatal System Error}
The initial session process or system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0×000000000 (0xc00000001 0×0010034c)”

This is one of those situations where the good old repair install would fix it. This was known as an “in place upgrade”.

With Vista, an in-place upgrade can only be started from within Windows, which means the system must be bootable.

Also, the System Restore data files are not user accessible (they are VSS diffs or something, rather than just RPxx files) like they were with XP, so that’s two repair processes out the window.

In place upgrades have been a standard repair method for as long as I can remember.

I remember deleting win.com out of the Windows directory and then proceeding to re-run the OEM Win95 setup. (Or was that my trick for upgrading to Windows 95 with an OEM non upgrade disk? I can’t remember -  it’s been a while).

Does anybody remember the “clean install without reformat” technique from the Windows 95 days? You would rip out the HKLM\System\CCS\ENUM, Services and other hardware parts of the registry, then do an in-place upgrade over the top.

All the way from Windows Nothing to Windows XP SP2, in-place upgrades have been the way to “re-install over the top”.

None of this is possible now on Vista because to do an in-place upgrade on Vista requires the system to be working. How’s that for stupidity. You can only repair a working system!

I hate Vista. I wish Microsoft had not hyped it up so much, maybe then they’d let it slip on by like the Millennium Edition that it is.

So, I will install a clean copy, and then pull in the registry files and user’s data from the broken install. If that looks good I’ll go with that, if not I’ll just go clean and move data files back into place.