Got a used computer. Illegal XP pro on it. I reformat with my legal, full version XP home. Done this a few times with no problems, not this time. Sorry if I don't word this perfect, I'm learning.....What I did..... Reformat hard drive to ntsf? (not quick) let the XP Home disc do it's thing Tells me this portion is done, restarts computer everything starts booting past the XP home screen then i get nailed with blue screen " STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error} The Session Manager Initialization system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xc000003a (0x00000000 ..." Tried to reboot all ways(safe, ect.) Ran Xp home disc again, I can get into repair (black) screen but know what to do Ran XP home disc, pressed enter to start, ran all the way to "press f8 to accept" Next screen I see says "can't read disc".......press enter when I have disc loaded" The disc I have is the real deal, not copied. I can not get past this screen to start over, I have no clue what to do. Nothing was wrong with this computer emachine 600is, 10gig hd, nothing special, nothing on it before I started. Shouldent be anything now since I got all the way through reformat. I read on google search to run "grub" bootloader. I have no idea which one to download or what to do with it. Please help Charlie

Did you try installing and trying a different CD Drive in the used computer along with a different IDE cable? Is the disc scratched? WinSimple Software

Grub bootloader is generally used with Linux installations. If the pirated installation was working OK, why did you bother to change it? All you had to do was "legalize" the product key. Rayburn & I differ on this point of few but IMO, 256MB isn't enough memory to give a decent XP experience. You may wanna consider an OS with lower ememory requirements such as Win 2000. There should be no reason why you can't reboot off the XP CD & start over. This time, delete all partitions, then recreate them as you see fit. Format as NTFS (full, not quick), then continue with the installation. Make sure you have no external devices connected other than the mouse & keyboard.

I dont know of any other way of legalizing it without having to pay for a key. I don't have the money but did have a legal copy of XP home. I know this isent enough memory but this computer is all I can afford right know. Getting online to get odd jobs on CL is all that is paying my bills so getting this computer back and running is important to me. (my other computer crashed and is maybe being fixed) I can't reformat again. I am trying anyway. It goes to the press f8 and than says it cant read the disc/ install a disc when the disc has been in the whole time. It just all of a sudden quits reading it?

"Rayburn & I differ on this point of few but IMO, 256MB isn't enough memory to give a decent XP experience." I'll go part way. It seems like 256MB of RAM with XP used to go farther than it does now. For example, I recently upgraded my video card and got a new sound card for my computer. By doing that, Task Manager jumped from showing a RAM usage around 100MB at the desktop to 210MB at the desktop. To me, that signifies that today's device drivers are requiring more RAM. On the flip side, take my backup slot 1 Pentium 3 system for example, which I recently upgraded to a S370 1 GHz CPU using an adapter. With all the native XP drivers installed for video, sound, etc., Task Manager showed 89MB of RAM usage at the desktop, which leaves a whole 167MB for applications. I don't see how XP could be bogged down with that much RAM available for applications. But to each their own. :) Now back to the OP: "It goes to the press f8 and than says it cant read the disc/ install a disc when the disc has been in the whole time. It just all of a sudden quits reading it?" Did you check the CD for scratches? Did you try another CD drive and IDE cable like I suggested? WinSimple Software

The disc is fine, I used it recently and then again tonight, 2 hours ago and it ran far past the f8 area without a problem. The IDE cables, I don't have another set. Check this out from another guy, does this help or make sense? .................................................. 'This is because XP home can never counter XP pro You will need to destroy XP pro totally using fdisk I have a video demostration here http://www.mediafire.com/?wnjegmk5nyw It is fast but you can pause the video in between to see what is happening. Download the win98.iso and burn it to a blank CD using imgburn program. Then boot it off the CD drive

If you did a full format, then you don't need to worry about XP Pro vs. XP Home. "Download the win98.iso and burn it to a blank CD using imgburn program. Then boot it off the CD drive" I don't really see how this could help. WinSimple Software