STOP: C000021a {Fatal System Error}

[2scoops0406]

OK - here's the deal.

IT'S FIXED!

It seems that there's something wrong with the resident winlogon.exe - I replaced it with an earlier one, rebooted and hey presto!

I can't tell you how much of a relief this is, and I wouldn't have persisted without the suggestions from all you guys.

Next action is to create a new ERD, then get my new XP client working and make this machine a file server - I'll never use RealPlayer on it again.

Why would realplayer replace winlogon.exe ? That's really suspect. Hmm oh well glad it's sorted. perhaps give it a good clean up and ghost it ?

 

[Softus]

I doubt that winlogon.exe was intentionally replaced - I think it's more likely that the rug was pulled from under whatever disk cache that NT4 maintains, so that when the spurious lockup occurred the only thing (so far) that suffered was that file.

I take your point about a cleanup, but this has kicked me into commissioning a new client as per my long-held intention to stop using my unofficial fileserver as a workstation. It's all laziness, 'cos I have an old PowerEdge under the desk that's been waiting for a new drive for the disk array. There's just so little time...