Ok, so just today, my Antivirus on my XP box (AVG) all of a sudden gave me all these error messages saying various Windows files were viruses, eventually even sigting itself as a virus. Then, I got the Blue Screen of Death, XP edition (lots o long words and stuff). So I restarted my box. It went past the XP loading screen, but then the screen went blank, and an error message appeared in a error box. The title was "lsass.exe-Unable to locate Component." The Error message read "This application has failed to start because" (it stopped on because). The only option was OK. So I click OK, and it restarts my box. Same thing. So I restart again, this time pressing F8. I go into "Last Known Good Configuration". Same thing. I try again, this time going into Safe Mode. Same Thing! Whats up with this? Could this be a hardware problem, or possibly a virus? Have any of you had this happen before? :confused:

Lsass.exe is part of the windows authentication system.

Since you can't boot even via safe mode you don't have a lot of options.

How you proceed would depend on how important the data on the drive is to you.

Not Important: Reformat the entire disk and rebuild from scratch

Like it but no biggie: Try a repair, if you have the emergency repair disk use that. If not just run the repair option.

Need it: Move the disk to another PC. Set it as a slave drive and see if you can see the data.

REALLY REALLY NEED IT: Norton Ghost the entire drive from a boot floppy. Restore it onto a new drive and start working on it from there. This keeps the origional intact in case you need to FedEx it out to a recovery company.


Good Luck.

Aye Aye, Cappy. Trying a repair right now. :fez:

Good luck and I'll stay tuned (for a bit anyway...)

Well, I tried doing the repair install, but it gave me the error as I was installing (:rolleyes: ). So I did a fresh install without reformatting. I kept most of my info (None of it was in the Windows Folder) EXCEPT for ALL of my videos and ripped CDs. But, Lucky for me, I actually made my last backup last night, as part of my New Years Resolution to back up more often :fez:

Well Done (on the backup...)

If it were my system I'd still do a full low level format (to look for bad tracks) and full reinstall before I trusted the system again.

Originally posted by Steve0
Well Done (on the backup...)

If it were my system I'd still do a full low level format (to look for bad tracks) and full reinstall before I trusted the system again.


Is there anyway I can check the disk before I format? (Will CHKDSK do it?)

You can try chkdsk, I've never been overly impressed with what it can do but it won't do any damage if you are using NTFS.

Check out:

http://www.bsu.edu/ucs/article/0,1370,6313-1985-4756,00.html

or

http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,111653,00.asp


Goodnight.

I didn't even think of ScanDisk :rolleyes:


Thanks! :) :geek: