Got  a call a few days ago from an aunt who was on a business trip together with my uncle.  They called me saying that my uncle’s computer was not booting up to Windows, they had no recollection of what might have caused the problem.  Upon probing, I found out that it was a Blue Screen error.  I told them to try some basic troubleshooting like booting to Last Known Good Configuration and booting to Safe Mode but none worked.

They were in Korea that time and had none of the recovery disc for their Dell Computer.  I told them to just bring the system back here in the Philippines so that I can repair it myself.  My uncle ended up buying a new computer since he needed one for his business transactions.

Today, my aunt arrived (unfortunately my uncle had to stay) with the computer (and some other goodies.. ^^,).  I immediately got my hands dirty and started working on it.  The specific error was “STOP c000021a Session Manager Initialization fails with status 0xc000026c”.  I encountered this problem before and was sure that it was a Windows Update that caused it but can’t simply remember what it was.  Google to my rescue as always, and pointed my direction to  Windows Update KB925902.

So what needs to be done was to remove this update from the machine.  If the system were able to boot to safe mode, System Restore would have been the best option.  For this we had to boot to the Recovery Console to remove the update manually.  Here’s the guide on how I removed the Windows Update manually.

1. Boot with a Windows XP CD
2. Once on the Welcome to Windows Install screen, press the letter “R” to access the recovery console.
3. Upon entering Recovery Console it will ask you which Windows installation you want to log into, usually there’s only 1, so just press the number 1 then ENTER.
4. If asked for an Admin password, enter your admin password, or you can just leave it blank which is the default and press ENTER.
5. You will now see C:WINDOWS>, change the folder using this command CD $NtUninstallKB925902$\spuninst then press ENTER
6. Type this command: batch spuninst.txt
   
7. If the command executed properly, you should see a spuninst.tag file in the folder.  To check type DIR then ENTER.
8. Type exit then press ENTER to restart the computer.

After doing this the computer should now boot up properly.  Hope this would help someone out there encountering this problem.

Have you noticed that overtime that your computer is taking longer to boot up.  From the time your press the power button until you have a fully clickable desktop takes about 5 minutes or more? Most of the time this is due to the multiple programs that are also started up when you turn on your computer.  If you noticed that there are a lot of icons in your system tray (near the clock), those are the programs that are started automatically when you turn on your computer.  Each of those applications adds to the time your computer takes to fullly boot up.  And some of those applications continue to use up your resources while running in the background and slows your computer down to a crawl.  So here’s a guide on how to disable those applications wich you dont need from starting up automatically.  I mostly prefer to disable all except for the anti virus and firewall software.

Before making any changes to the computer it is strongly advised that you make a system restore point so that we can easily restore the computer to a working state just incase we mess something up.  Ok here’s how you do it.

Step 1: Open the System Configuration Utility

• for XP, click start > run, then type msconfig on the run box and press ENTER
• for VISTA, click start type msconfig on the search box then press ENTER
• alternately, you can just press the windows logo + R to open up the run box, this works for XP and VISTA

Step 2: Disable programs from startup

• with the System configuration Utility Open, click on the startup tab
• uncheck the boxes for the programs that you dont want to load automatically on startup.  just use your judgement on which programs you want to start automatically on startup.  unckecking these boxes does not mean that you are removing the program or uninstalling it from your computer.  this just disables the program from starting automatically.  for example – you disabled yahoo messenger from startup.  the icon for yahoo messenger will no longer come up in the system tray but you can still open up your yahoo messenger by clicking on the YM shortcut in your desktop.
• click on apply, then click close
• prompt will ask you if you want to restart the computer, just click on restart

Step 3: Disabling System Configuration Utility pop-up message

•  after the computer reboots and brings you back up to the desktop, a message will come up telling you that you have just edited the system configuration utility… blah.. blah.. blah.. just click on the checkbox Dont Show this message again the click on ok.

That’s it.  This should increase the bootup time of your computer.  Most of the time its your antivirus software or firewall that takes up much of the boot up time process, but it is recommended that you do not disable these from booting up bec. the risk of running without protection will not compensate for a small increase in boot up time. 

If incase after doing this your computer will no longer boot up, try running the Last Known Good Configuration or Run System Restore.

Here’s an easy fix for a computer not booting up to Windows. It’s called the Last Known Good Configuration feature which is part of your Windows startup options. The Last Known Good Configuration allows you to start your computer by using the most recent settings that worked for your machine. Every time you turn your computer off and Windows shuts down successfully, important system settings are saved in the registry. We can use this saved setting to start the computer up normally when we encounter problems booting up our machine.

This is very useful specially when you have installed a driver or software which is causing some problems on your machine.  Doing this will not affect your files.  Here’s the guide on how to do this.

1. Power on the computer.
2. As soon as the computer start turning on, keep tapping the F8 Key.
3. You should now see the Windows Advanced Options menu.  (if you don’t see this screen, then turn the computer off and back to step 1)
4. From the menu options, use your arrow keys and highlight Boot to Last Known Good Configuration (your most recent settings that worked), then press Enter.
5. If your computer has more than one operating system installed, use the arrow keys to highlight the operating system that you want to start, and then press ENTER. Windows will then resume starting normally.

This is the same procedure for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and even for Windows 7.  So hope this has been of help to you.