Well, i found this on the forums, it was an old message and wouldnt let me post a reply to it, so i thought i'd copy it and paste, as i already wrote my reply 'to it'.. and you wouldnt know what i was talking about if you didnt read the old post. :p
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Name: Paul C. Bijkersma
Date: November 08, 2001 at 08:09:37 Pacific
Subject: Fatal System Error Prevents Booting
Comment:
I can no longer boot to XP in my dual boot system.
I get the initial splash screen, then a message comes up that the file "autochk" can't be found, thus "skipping autocheck"
Then I get the Blue screen Stop message c000021a {Fatal System Error} The Session Manager Initialization System process terminated unexpected;y with a staus of 0xc0000034 (0x00000000 0x00000000) The system has been shut down.
First happened when I was uninstalling MS Works 2000 (had to put the CD in), had to reboot to finish uninstall, got that blue screen (or one much like it, i confess i didnt examine the first one very carefully.)
That uninstall was in Win98SE, when i rebooted to same, no problems, only now i cant boot into XP.
I searched the MSKB on all sorts of variations and portions of the above error message, but found nothing relevant.
Other info - Dell PIII 600, 256 RAM, 10 gig HD, which I recently partitioned with PM 7.0 to try to "safely" install XP to a separate partition. It did install and run fine for a few days, now this.
Many TIA.
Oh, forgot to mention - tried as many boot alternatives as Win XP's boot manager screen would allow me, e.g. boot using last known good settings (I assume this is using System Restore), safe mode, enable logging, debugging mode, etc. etc.
None of the above changed a darn thing.
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This same exact thing has happened to me. Mine occured when I tried to setup a dual boot with win XP and Redhat 8.0.
I used partition magic to resize my original whole NTFS HD (80gb) into three. The NTFS, a linux native ext2 (about 7 gigs), and a linux swap of 1gb. I used the "Install a new OS" wizard in PM, and it walked me through making the new partitions, resizing them, etc. Then it asked me if i wanted to set the linux partition as active, which I did. I figured that since I'd be using grub to do the booting, it would need to first load grub. I installed Linux no sweat, and setup grub right in the install wizard. First boot into linux went perfectly. Later, when I tried to boot into XP..... I get the exact same above error, including the inability to find autochk.However, in addition, I get "Cannot find xmnt2002 ... skipping autochk" (yes, autochk on a line about xmnt) or something like that... in the same exact style. Then, the error.
I figure that its not a problem with linux, as linux boots fine, and grub even hands off the boot fine... xp STARTS to boot. Which makes me believe its not a problem with an inability to FIND the os or something. I dont know where to go from here.
I as well, tried safe mode, command prompt, etc. They all come back with that same error. I have also searched around the net, and have been unable to find anything, except here. (yay!)
To top it all of, my first gut reaction was to boot into the recovery console, and fixboot or something.... well.... apparently at some point I set an admin password that I now dont remember. I downloaded the SAM from within linux, and have been trying to crack my own damn password with l0pht crack (LC4), but with no luck.
Just recently, I reluctantly tried to do a repair install of XP over itself, hoping it wouldnt destroy linux. .....even worse. It says that it cant recognize my first partition on my HD as being windows compatible!! It said I should delete the partition and make a new one...
Please, for the love of God, don't say I have to go that route! :c(
Thanks,
Nick
PS. Feel free to email me... please do! If you can give any suggestions or ideas. You can also post replies here, as I will bookmark this thread and be checking back..