Fatal System Error on Vista

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mcjon77

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mcjon77
Hi guys,

I am having some real trouble with my Laptop that has been running Vista. My laptop shut down yesterday and when I tried to restart it I got the blue screen of death with a message that said:
STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error}

I tried to reboot and got no luck. I hit F8 and tried to go to "last known good configuration, and got the same message. I tried safe mode, but that stopped when it tried to load crcdisk.sys.

I have the backup DVD that I made for my laptop a few years ago, but when I tried to use that, the only option it gave me was to erase the hard drive and reinstall windows. I REALLY REALLY don't wan't to do that.

I am looking for my Knoppix LIVE CD so that I can move files, if need be.

There has got to be another way to fix this. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
 
(Cue "Buy a Mac" comments in 3... 2... 1...)
 
Do you have any remote access software installed?

Is your virus scanner up to date?

This one usually results from incompatible drivers installed with certain remote access programs, or by a Trojan. I had one a few weeks ago on a client's machine.

Either way, it probably can be fixed manually with a bootable Linux disk, but using the correct version of the MSDART bootable recovery environment (the 32- or 64-bit Vista version, to match your OS version) makes it simpler.

In theory, it's possible that you might find an ISO of MSDART on, for example, Bittorent. Only in theory, of course...

-Rich
 
OK, so I won't disappoint: your fatal error was using a machine with Vista on it to begin with. We're just now migrating off XP to 7.
 
Thanks guys, for all of the good advice. I'm going to try out the ideas tonight. Wish me luck!
 
If you get a hold of an MSDART CD, try viewing the critical system folders in list view, organized by time, and see if there's anything suspicious in there.

If you're reasonably certain that there's nothing malicious, you can use MSDART to do a partial system restore, which usually makes the machine bootable again, at least, so you can fix the problem.

All of this can also be done manually, but it's a lot more work.

-Rich
 
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