Shoutbox

I have a Dell and was using Windows Update to install SP3. I also have a task in Task Manager set up to run every hour on the hour.

I think what happened was that Task Manager ran during the install process & I got an error dialog box.

I moved the error box out the way so I could click 'Cancel' for the install process. It said it was canceling the loop persisted.

I kept clicking 'OK' and then another would pop up. I did this for a good 10 minutes hoping the loop would end. It never did.

I did this for at least a hour while I was working on another computer just keeping an eye on things.

Then I just hit the power button, got a message about it restoring from an old version or something because it didn't complete the install.

When it rebooted, it looked like things were going OK but then I got a big blue screen with this message:

STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error}
The Session Manager Initialization system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xc000003a (0x00000000 0x00000000).
The system has been shut down.

Naturally, I don't want re-install XP Pro from the disks & lose all my programs and data. My back up version is too old to be of any real use ot be honest.

I tried to boot up in Safe Mode. In case it's helpful, it prints a bunch of command line type info on the screen loading different parts of the OS. The last line of the list of things reads this:

...System32/drviers/mup.sys

Before I get the error message, I get this message:

      autochk program was not found - skipping AUTOCHECK

But I really need an expert here because I'm without a net on this one.

Any Windows genius' out there want to help a brother out?