Expert: Michael Troy - 5/19/2009

Question
QUESTION: I'm having a problem with my Dell laptop. It was acting funny so I did a virus scan. It showed that there was a virus but froze so that I couldnt do anything with it. I had to shut it down and when i restarted this is what came up: "C000021a Session manager intialization system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xc0000034, Sytem has been shut down." When I restart the same thing comes up with a blue screen. Is there anything I can do to fix this? I appreciated any advise you can give me. Thanks

ANSWER: Hi Karen,

It is possible that you have a corrupted system file or bad hardware, but a virus is a real possibility too.  There are a number of viruses that can interfere or cause problems when an anti-virus attempts to detect and remove them.

When I go after such a problem, I usually try to use a number of different programs, Spybot S&D, SuperAntiSpyware, and Vipre a all good ones that can be downloaded for free.  You may want to try to run some or all of these from Safe Mode.

I hope this helps!
- Mike



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi again Mike:
I ended up having to reinstall WindowsXP and all the drivers. I didn't really have anything I was worried about loosing on that pc anyway. The virus was preventing me from d/ling any anti-virus programs too.
It seemed to be running fine last night but when I went to use it today, I keep getting the cannot find server page. the only thing I can get into is my MTS webmail. Any idea what might be causing this? I have AVG installed.
Karen

Answer
It is quite possible that whatever infected the PC before has infected it again.  If there is another infected computer on your network, it could be sending the virus to the other PC.  AVG is a decent antivirus, but cannot protect against everything.  It is also very important to install all MS service packs and security updates on the PC right away.

- Mike